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[Folly]

Well, I for one am happy to do my part for this 'make lots of babies' plan.
...just so long as I don't have to take responsibility for them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Dunamisdeos]

He wrote about it in that article, but no he did not put it out there on the floor.

[Gentlefish]

How much carbon does the average baby bind?

If you make enough of them and then bury them underground you can put all that carbon that was released from burning fossil fuel back into the earth.
And if you do it deep enough and in large enough quantities it'll maybe turn to oil in a ten thousand years.

Literal baby oil.

This is the best, most modern take of A Modest proposal. Bravo, sir, bravo.

[PTTG??]

Nwabudike Morgan when

Hey, say what you like, but Morganites had the highest standard of living of all the humans on Planet.

At least until Santiago busted them into oblivion....

[wierd]

I dunno.  I always played as University. (Despite the glaring errors in some of zakharov's dialog. There are no quarks in electrons Zakharov. No. There are none! Electrons are leptons!)

[Rolan7]

Also, I suspect that he actually did have retroviral capability.  His denial was surely an oversight.

[Trekkin]

I dunno.  I always played as University. (Despite the glaring errors in some of zakharov's dialog. There are no quarks in electrons Zakharov. No. There are none! Electrons are leptons!)

I always read that quote as intentionally poetic, since it sounded like "For I Have Tasted the Fruit" was written for the layman; Zakharov seemed to be making a general comment about how particles once thought elementary have repeatedly turned out to be composite, which would explain why he described electrons as "behind" atoms. They aren't in any physical sense, but conceptually, sure.

Besides, in a world where there's a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A and that planet has an alien-created hive mind running gigantic colonies of psychic worms into my colonies every freaking turn, maybe electrons are made of quarks after all.

[Il Palazzo]

People are always harping on arguments from authority, but come on. Zakharov is an academician, while wierd likes to eat children. Whom do you believe?

[smjjames]

Are we seriously going to go against that just because HeS a RePuBLiCaN???

No. We're going to go against that because "have more babies so they can find solutions" is another way to hold off on solving the problem, this time on a generational timescale. Gaetz and Alexander's proposals have the same problem, because the Republican playbook is to stay ten steps behind the problem until they leave office or public interest stalls out. That is, in a sense, the core functionality of conservatism.

Solutions exist. They are just not solutions the plutocrats' lapdogs are willing to accept.

In regards to climate change we're probably running out of generations even able to solve the problem.

It's going to soon get to the point where our energies are better off focused on adapting and preparing than trying to stop it entirely.

[sluissa]

Are we seriously going to go against that just because HeS a RePuBLiCaN???

No. We're going to go against that because "have more babies so they can find solutions" is another way to hold off on solving the problem, this time on a generational timescale. Gaetz and Alexander's proposals have the same problem, because the Republican playbook is to stay ten steps behind the problem until they leave office or public interest stalls out. That is, in a sense, the core functionality of conservatism.

Solutions exist. They are just not solutions the plutocrats' lapdogs are willing to accept.

In regards to climate change we're probably running out of generations even able to solve the problem.

It's going to soon get to the point where our energies are better off focused on adapting and preparing than trying to stop it entirely.

We're already at that point. The problem is that we still have to stop it at some point or else it'll get beyond the point where we can adapt and prepare.

There's a bunch of admittedly questionable and not always 100% clear tipping points that could lead to a runaway climate change that would likely be impossible to adapt to. If it's not methane being released from warming land/oceans, then it's ocean acidification, or loss of arctic albedo, or thermohaline shutdown, or... there's several more that are popular, and then probably hundreds of less and less likely scenarios.

But enough of those are plausible I'd say it's something we're going to need to stop at some point rather than just let it keep going and hope we can handle it. At the very least I don't expect to live long enough to see extinction on the table personally, but I'd rather future generations have a chance. Although without that to consider......

Perhaps babies aren't the solution, but the problem. Without a generation to follow us there's really no reason to worry.

[Egan_BW]

The longer you plan to live, the less you have to worry about what happens to future generations and the more you have to worry about what happens to you.

[WealthyRadish]

The longer you plan to live, the less you have to worry about what happens to future generations and the more you have to worry about what happens to you.

Damn, the "bury the babies" plan keeps looking better.

[Kagus]

Y'know, George Bush actually signed an initiative for encouraging the production of biofuels.

Sure, it was more about cutting down US dependence on foreign oil, and it did end up accidentally resulting in a big whop of CO2 emissions along with a bump in palm oil oligarchy, but it was something!

[Reelya]

According to wikipedia's composition of the human body, an average 6-pound baby contains about .9 lbs of carbon.

So, I'm guessing retooling the fuel economy to baby oil wouldn't solve global warming?

The internet seems to think that approximately one pound of coal produces one kwh. Coal contains on average 35-45% carbon. So one baby is equal to around 2 lb of coal, for simplicity's sake, or 2 kwh. The average American home uses around 7200 kwh a year. It would therefore take a ballpark estimate of 459,324,000,000 babies to power all of the homes in the United States

Yes, but burning 4 babies reduces the needed energy by about 1 household's worth longterm, so you are in fact getting 1 household's energy saved per 4 babies. The energy released by the actual baby is an insignificant proportion of this amount, it's just noise in the calculation.

[sluissa]

Perhaps babies aren't the solution, but the problem. Without a generation to follow us there's really no reason to worry.

I mean, we've been on that path for a while now. Birth rate has been falling across numerous countries for a while now, and is only expected to continue falling.

But people are still having babies. You'd need to cut all procreation completely for that solution to work.

Mild sarcasm intended for this whole argument, obviously.

I personally hate kids, but I acknowledge their importance to continuing the species.