Dearche @ Dearche @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

Theoretically carbon capture can work, but just like you said, it takes additional energy to capture carbon, and that amount is more than what it takes to produce the needed electricity if you're using a carbon based energy source.

That said, if you go for something like nuclear, than you do get a clean source of energy that can be used to capture existing carbon. But we're already at the point where our energy infrastructure is inadequate for just electrifying what we currently have, and in a few years the Pickering plant is going to have to shut down due to being so old (though apparently the government is trying to delay it as there's no plans for building a new plant of any sort to replace the Pickering plant).

So even in the best case scenario, it'll be more than a decade before any sort of large scale carbon capture scheme can even be started, as that's how long it'll take to build enough new plants to cover existing demand, let alone accounting for future demand.

Since things like iced coffee and unsweetened tea exists, I don't really have a problem with options, especially since they've both become common enough to be canned.

That said, the term "sober curious" just sounds degrading, like you're saying "that weirdo guy who's actually wondering what it's like to be sober" rather than someone who doesn't want to be a publicly acceptable drug addict.

Zoning is generally the #1 problem in regards to housing, though mostly as a result. It's the NIMBY movement as a root cause and the reason why such strict zoning is even a thing.

Most of the cost of a home comes from the land sale itself, unless if you're building somewhere nobody wants the land (in which case there's nothing nearby to earn a living by as well). Considering that, building larger will only marginally increase the price. Doubly so if the larger building is for more than one resident.

A pair of townhouses can be built for almost the same cost of a single typical single family house, yet house two families on the same plot of land. A condo or apartment can house dozens for the cost of less than 10 normal houses.

Not to mention the reduced cost of plumbing and heating if you build one large building for a community rather than having dozens of separate systems for individual shacks.

You know, the first thing I thought of is that you could build like 6x that many homes if you just didn't bother with the yards and added a second story. I mean, yes, what was done is nice, but it's basically just a trailer park. I bet that the land alone was like 70% of the cost if not 90% as well, so building the houses more densely would've provided for several times as many people for almost no extra cost.

Alternatively, a single mid-rise apartment building would've done the same thing on only a fraction of the land, and probably a lot more comfortable to live in, not to mention cheaper on amenities like heating and sewage.

Every single point here is the same issues that go into every industry, especially important ones like energy. And nuclear is a far better option compared to any fossil fuel industry anyways.

Besides, the more electricity we generate, the less excuse we have to rely on natural gas for heating, which is one of the top sources of carbon in Canada. Thankfully because hydro generates like 70% of all of Canada's electricity, but there's a serious limit to that considering that most of that hydro is generated on the Eastern half of the country and the prairies have almost no waterfalls.

Can't say I agree with this at all. The thing about fission that people regularly mistaken about is how much actual waste there is, and how little of a deal it is. Not to mention that all the safety processes and security issues that you mentioned had been solved since the 70s or so. I mean, there's never been an incident in the entire world regarding nuclear fuel or waste being stolen. Only nations have ever produced a nuclear weapon, dirty or atomic.

And in regards to waste, the amount of high level nuclear waste that's been produced world wide is only a few dozen tons, all of which can be recycled and reused, cutting down the half-life from millions of years down to only a bit above 200 years, and reducing the total quantity of waste to only a fraction of the original amount. I mean, when people throw around all the nuclear waste numbers, they include low level waste as well, which include things like the radiation suits the workers wear while working near the reactor. Waste that become non-nuclear waste after a holding time of two months and are generally tossed with the trash like normal.

In addition, the worry about natural disasters is entirely a red herring for most nations that build nuclear reactors in the first place. The containment building of a nuclear reactor is designed to survive an actual missile strike. You could have a 747 dive bomb the nuclear plant, and it wont' crack the containment building. Nothing short of something on the level of a US bomber squadron dropping an entire flight of bombs, or a conventional nuclear weapon, directly on the plant will crack that thing. No natural disaster short of a magnitude 10.0 earthquake or a volcano sprouting underneath the plant will cause any decent nuclear plant to leak radiation.

And if you're going to mention Fukushima as a counter example, then let me remind you, that it took a direct hit from both an earthquake and a tsunami to disable the plant (the containment building didn't even crack from that), and the backup generator room drowning for a good 2 weeks without a single nuclear technician not being able to enter the entire city for that duration before the critical explosion happening. The damn reactor, a design that was considered flawed due to putting the generator room underneath the plant instead of above it like the original recommendations to lower the risk of terrorists that the US was worried about in the 70s in a nation without a history of terrorism before the 90s, managed to survive without power for its cooling systems nor any technicians to repair anything for 2 weeks. And to make matters worse, the Fukushima plant was actually slated to be retired a decade before it due to being too old, but was pushed to stay online until a newer plant could be built, so it was even way past its decommission date on top of every other factor going against it. And the worst that happened was a slight elevation of radiation for that one year, and the current discharge of tritium that is magnitudes lower than the amount that pretty much any nuclear plant discharges during normal operations. Far lower than the amount that anyone who sources water from Lake Ontario or the St Lawrence drinks on a regular basis, for example.

Culpability party. The whole point is to enact laws that make people culpable for the things they say. If a member of parliament accuse something, and it's found not to be true, they get some sort of penalty. If they promise something during elections and it doesn't happen after they get elected, they and their party gets a punishment.

And not just some sort of slap on the wrist, but something substantial enough that repeat offences can be career ending within the field of politics. Politicians need to be responsible for what they say, as words are their weapons of choice, and with the level of power they have, they should also carry that level of responsibility.

While there is something to be said about saying something wrong due to ignorance, it's another matter to say something with authority on a subject one is ignorant about. You can't just say something like abortions should be outlawed because women can just turn off their fertility (yes, a politician actually said that).

No, I think such low density housing is actually the cause of the problem, at least around the big cities. Toronto already has some pretty terrible transit times at the average being something like 100 minutes each way due to the distance from one's home to their work place. Increasing density is the only option, though as a compromise, I think townhouses are extremely good.

Get rid of front yards and just make all the houses long, and you can fit as much as 3 units with the same or greater floor space as one of those houses on a single plot of land. Combine that with tons of mid-rise apartments and independent housing is accessible to even those stuck on minimum wage jobs.

$300k for a house in downtown Tokyo on average. If they can do it simply by having good zoning laws, anybody can do it with a bit of real work.

Not to mention that Finland is known for having zero homeless thanks to public housing as well. Having a safe place to live is the first step to fixing up your life, as if you're always worried that your possessions can be taken the moment you look away or go do something, there's no way you can take the time to find a job.

And with the declining importance of oil, along with the lack of infrastructure and economic buildup because they didn't tax that oil revenue properly over the decades, if they really went independent on this, if anything, all retirees would be fucked over the next decade.

Honestly, I bet that the number they came up with was simply based on theoretical contributions according to the profits made on oil without actually looking at the contributions themselves.

Hmm...looking closer at the stats, I suppose you have a point. The number of sales are definitely down, even if only marginally. Though the prices of property is going up, it's not by as much as the drop in total sales.

While I refute that this is definite proof that the bubble is deflating (hopefully not bursting) I'll admit that it is evidence pointing towards that as long as the trend holds in the grander scheme of things.

I'll refrain from saying more until we see how the numbers move once interest rates drop back down, as I believe this is one of the biggest causes for the drop in home sales at the moment. Home prices were out of control back when interest was only 0.5%, so it's a given that the market would cool off when it's ten times that.

Honestly, I hope you're right and this'll mean that housing will cool off and slowly reach a decent level, but I doubt we'll get it that easy and we'll be dealing with a crash with the economic fallout going with it while still having a massive housing shortage a decade from now.

The average Canadian household is less than 3 people due to high rates of single child households and high divorce rates. That leaves quite a few families of 3-4 occupying 2 different residences. Not to mention all the single people who have their own place but are looking, then all the younger people who are past 30 yet still haven't moved out of their parents places because they have no hope of affording their own home within 100km of where they already live.

You are an exception amongst exceptions. Not only are you still attached, but you have more than 2 children. And while divorce rates aren't nearly as bad as some would perceive, the rates of families with more than one child, and especially more than two, are so dismally low that the official fertility rate of Canadians is currently at 1.484, with a ton of that being bolstered thanks to immigrants.

I was looking at the numbers, and while I agree to a certain point (if prices are going down, it's better to rent and hope that prices will continue going down so you can buy at the best price possible) but prices have shot back up since the last year and are almost at the 2021 prices in the span of a single year. We had a temporary dip in prices, not any form of a drop.

And as for incentive, there's a massive amount. With prices as high as they are, it's entirely a seller's market, and if you can make more homes, you basically have as much cash to take as you have homes to sell. The issue is that builders aren't able to build new homes due to legislation, zoning regulations, and plenty of other hurdles placed. I keep seeing so many properties that have "we are planning to build this skyscraper condo here once we have our permit" and the old building just sits there for 3-5 years before they get their approval.

No I think the op-ed is trying to say that no matter how many homes we build, it won't matter because those who already have homes can just leverage those homes to take on loans to buy more homes, preventing those who don't have them from actually buying homes since they're always at a deficit compared to those who are effectively already rich.

What I'm saying is that if the supply of homes increase by something like 40% across the board, it won't matter if many of these people buy a second or third home, as it's not like every person with a house is going to buy more. And even if they do, they'll resort to renting them out because a home they're not actively using is nothing but a cost that has a high chance of costing more than anything they can sell it for in a few decades due to property taxes. If they do rent them out, they'll be competing with a massively increased rental market, lowering prices or else dealing with property that is costing money rather than making money.

A net win even if everything this person says comes true. And if it doesn't, we have a massive influx of homes that'll push down prices. The only issue is that we'll be dealing with a new and long term recession as the retirement plans of millions go out the window. It's a risk but taking this risk is the only way to prevent this problem from increasing perpetually, or else the housing prices crashing due to the bubble popping anyways.

While I understand the views of this article, I don't believe it. It's true that if we build 100k homes in each province, it'll do little to dent housing prices. We don't need 100k new homes, we need like a million in each major city. People keep talking about how big of a deal building a few thousand homes are, but they're literally a drop in the bucket at this point when we should be increasing the supply not by 1-2%, but a good 20-40%.

And while I agree that not everybody would be looking to get their own personal house, increasing housing would vastly let up the pressure on rentals as well. And making rentals cheap enough that you could get one while working part time as a student would also mean that the moment you get a full-time job, you'd have the free time to do everything you could want to improve your life. The fertility crisis we're having wouldn't be such a big deal either, not to mention all the stress the young are dealing with since they know that moving out of home before 30 is a pipe dream for most of them.

The Rhinoceros Party then.

Besides, I like Rhinos, so that can't hurt :P

Of course $7500 isn't nearly enough for pulling someone out of homelessness.

To be honest, I think it's far more efficient to give the homeless proper homes with locking doors and a respectable level of privacy as well as access to clean water and some sort of minimum level of food (like an infinite supply of rolled oats). It doesn't need to be a big home, even something little better than a capsule hotel room would be enough.

The homeless stay homeless because nobody can pull themselves together if they're constantly stressed trying to figure out how to even reach the next day. It's even worse when you don't have access to a shower to clean yourself up to be presentable enough to get through an interview at even the most unwanted jobs.

It's the single biggest reason why mental illness is so rampant amongst the homeless and few ever repair their lives.

They shouldn't be in third place. They should be fourth or fifth place, behind the Rhinoceros Party, Centrist Party, and the Communist Party, or perhaps even the People's Party.

None of the top parties will decide to work hard to make meaningful and positive change if a fire isn't lit under all of them, and there's no fire greater than an insignificant party suddenly becoming a legitimate threat.

Was it a tax? I thought the law simply required third parties to actually pay for reproducing the work of news outlets? Basically paying for paid work, rather than just stealing it?