monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

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Care to answer the question about the tax returns?

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Why? It has no bearing on anything concerning his leadership or agenda.

Another Booming Trump Jobs Report Shocks Establishment

WASHINGTON — Before it became the chief sticking point in a government shutdown drama that threatens to consume his presidency at a critical moment, President Trump’s promise to build a wall on the southwestern border was a memory trick for an undisciplined candidate.

As Mr. Trump began exploring a presidential run in 2014, his political advisers landed on the idea of a border wall as a mnemonic device of sorts, a way to make sure their candidate — who hated reading from a script but loved boasting about himself and his talents as a builder — would remember to talk about getting tough on immigration, which was to be a signature issue in his nascent campaign.

“How do we get him to continue to talk about immigration?” Sam Nunberg, one of Mr. Trump’s early political advisers, recalled telling Roger J. Stone Jr., another adviser. “We’re going to get him to talk about he’s going to build a wall.”

Talk Mr. Trump did, and the line drew rapturous cheers from conservative audiences, thrilling the candidate and soon becoming a staple of campaign speeches. Chants of “Build the wall!” echoed through arenas throughout the country.

Now, Mr. Trump’s fixation with a border wall — the material embodiment of his keep-them-out immigration agenda — has run headlong into the new realities of divided government, pitting him against Democrats who reject the idea out of hand. The impasse is particularly remarkable given that even some immigration hard-liners do not regard the wall as their highest priority and fear that Mr. Trump’s preoccupation with it will prompt him to cut a deal that trades a relatively ineffectual measure for major concessions on immigration.

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Nonsense.

new realities of divided government,

Because we have higher energy needs.

Preserving nature is good.

But I don't see how building nuclear reactors prevents us from preserving nature.

Fossil fuels originate as sunlight/solar-energy, and they are replenished by very slow gradual compounding of biological fibers, fats, etc. into denser forms. We use them at a rate much faster than the rate they are replenished because we just look at them for what they are and not how they are made.

Nuclear/radioactive fuel originates from outside the solar system. Our sun is not massive enough to generate such heavy elements. The radioactive materials that are underground now have reached us by meteors from outside the solar system, or maybe they are still left over from the time the planet was formed to begin with. Either way, they aren't replenished except by the occasional radioactive meteor strike.

The reason you dismiss concern for the non-renewability of nuclear fuel is because you're not thinking about a longer time frame. You are procrastinating reforms to future generations, who you assume will have an easier time changing than we do. But why would assume that? We have the technological ability currently to better insulate buildings and bodies to make do with less energy, but still we resist change because it's inconvenient. Why shouldn't we be the ones to bite the bullet and change so future generations don't have that burden to deal with?

Finally, consider this: whenever we use a non-renewable or otherwise unsustainable form of energy, that energy corresponds with products and lifestyles we get used to. So by failing to change our consumption habits and lifestyles to the correct level of energy, which is sustainable for the indefinite future, we allow patterns of consumer/lifestyle/economic expectations to settle deeper and deeper, making them that much harder to question, challenge, and change in the future.

While the supply is finite, it is vast. The supply is going to last us for a very long time.

We will eventually be able to put giant orbiting mirrors in space to beam very large quantities of solar energy down to receiving stations on the ground. When that happens we will be able to transition entirely over to renewable energy.

At least, we will be able to do so until the universe runs out of material to form new stars. So long as there are still stars, our descendants will be able to migrate to a different star when their current star dies. But when the last stars burn out, humanity will have to transition back over to non-renewable energy.

Our lifestyle is sustainable. Humanity has more than enough nonrenewable energy to last us until we can get those orbiting space mirrors up.

You're just arguing for maintaining an unsustainable pattern until it can be remedied in the future. That's procrastinating. It's unacceptable when we already have the technological means to reduce per capita energy use using better insulation for buildings and bodies.

It sets a bad precedent to give in to it and rely on it, even if you say you're planning to quit after a while as an excuse. It's like saying you're going to smoke or drink for a while to get over a divorce, but with the plan to quit once you've recovered emotionally. Bad idea.

Why don't you just realize that our energy tastes are relative to unsustainable norms we've established.

Why do we need to heat and cool entire buildings instead of just insulating certain rooms very well and sufficing with drastically less energy that way?

You are not thinking through the effects of adding energy to a balanced energy system. Think about a pot of soup simmering on low-med heat. If you start increasing the rate of energy input, the soup is going to boil more turbulently and your vegetables and other bits are going to go mushy.

Earth's biosphere and geology are established to sustain themselves with the natural energy levels that we receive from the sun. The energy in the core is established to do what it does, including maintaining the magnetic field that protects life from cosmic rays and plate tectonics.

Why not just leave those energy processes in their natural form and use our technological prowess to work well with what nature gives us, making effort to disturb it as little as possible? It is possible. We have the ability with current technology.

That perverts the meaning of sustainability. I think you already know that and you're just being defiant.

Reflecting more sunlight to Earth might also turn out to be a bad idea. Even if the amount of energy added didn't cause problems, humans would still reach a point of feeling dissatisfied and wanting more energy. Why? Because that is built into our brain's problem-solving intelligence. You could be chilling in your shorts and t-shirt at 75F when it's -20F outside and if you figured out a way to raise the indoor temp to 85F and go swimming, you'd think you were making technological progress. In reality, you'd just be solving a fake problem, which causes waste and degeneration at a larger level.

The better way to apply our problem-solving intelligence is to see that it's -20F outside and that we could be more comfortable at a lower temperature by using less energy and confining the heat to one or two well-insulated rooms, and/or even wearing warmer clothes to insulate our body heat. The human body, after all, uses about 100W of energy so why not maximize the benefit and enjoyment we get from that heat we emit naturally, instead of wearing thin clothes and heating up the entire room/house/planet?

Because those norms are 100% sustainable.

livinglava wrote:

Why do we need to heat and cool entire buildings instead of just insulating certain rooms very well and sufficing with drastically less energy that way?

Because it's more comfortable.

livinglava wrote:

You are not thinking through the effects of adding energy to a balanced energy system. Think about a pot of soup simmering on low-med heat. If you start increasing the rate of energy input, the soup is going to boil more turbulently and your vegetables and other bits are going to go mushy.

We don't use nearly enough energy to cause problems like that.

Because we want more energy than that.

Not at all. We have more than enough nonrenewable supplies to last us until the giant orbiting space mirrors are up.

So we divert more and more sunlight to our energy needs. Maybe we end up with a Dyson swarm in a few thousand years. It's not a problem.

Because it's more comfortable to heat the entire house.

Fossil fuels originate as sunlight/solar-energy, and they are replenished by very slow gradual compounding of biological fibers, fats, etc. into denser forms. We use them at a rate much faster than the rate they are replenished because we just look at them for what they are and not how they are made.

Again that is wrong. That may be true for firewood but it is not true of petroleum or propane. Those things are not fossil fuels, they are part of the planet's body chemistry and continuously produced, and we will never run out of them.

Im not sure we will need mirrors in space, when we can combine solar and geomag power generation. I dont thing geomagnetics has even been discussed.

I don't think you're thinking it through far enough. You know what's 100% sustainable? Living in a breezy cottage under a shade tree without air-conditioning; gathering and burning naturally-fallen dead wood in tiny amounts in a coffee pot sized super-efficient woodstove in a single super-insulated room. Do you know why those are 100% sustainable? Because as long as the ratio of humans to shade trees produces enough shade-cooling and tree droppings to keep you comfortable, you are not creating more of a dent than any wild animal living in your place.

When you use as much resources as a deer, you've reached sustainability. The challenge of being a human is how to turn that amount of resource consumption into enough by using insulation and other innovations. That's why humans have intelligence and ingenuity.

How is it more comfortable? If your skin feels warm in a coat and mittens, why is that less comfortable than sitting in a t-shirt in a room that's 75F? It's just aesthetic perception, which is subjective/relative.

Again, you're not thinking it through far enough. What you're saying is like a kid who says he doesn't eat enough candy and drink enough soda to cause health problems, but then ends up with health problems when he's 50 because he never grasped the cumulative effects of long-term patterns.

When dealing with a spoiled kid who can't understand the difference between wants and needs, do you accept, "but I want it" as a legitimate argument in favor of them getting what they want?

Ok, I get it. You want to maintain your attitude. It's wrong. You'll see when you grow up.

Have you given serious thought to how much energy there is beyond the atmosphere, or do you just like Star Trek a lot?

Beyond the atmosphere there is no shade and no atmosphere to filter and scatter sunlight.

Earth has night and winter to shade it and gravity to keep the water from boiling away and a magnetic field to keep the air from being blasted away by solar wind.

When you try to replace all the comforts Earth as a planet provides naturally just by its mass, size, and speed of rotation, not to mention tectonic plate movements that cause topographical variations - when you try to replace all those things with artificial gravity, artificial cooling, artificial filtering of x-rays and cosmic rays, etc. you end up with a much lower quality product, even if it is a product that is quite impressive in terms of human ingenuity.

It's subjective and not worth the harm it causes to future generations. You should learn to see that your tastes are subjective and change them for the greater good. You'd be happier in the long run.