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[Reelya]

But we can distinguish between historical catalysts and things that actually changed the laws. The stonewall riots didn't make politicians jump up to change laws. The peaceful advocacy which came out of the riots would have been an equally effective strategy whether or not there was an actual riot to kick it off.

Peaceful advocacy over many years. Hearts and minds campaigns. Regardless of which event caused the advocacy groups to form, it's the peaceful advocacy which did the job of getting the laws changed. Repeated rioting would not have achieved that.

It was about slavery for many people, but for the government, it was mostly about preserving the union.

But preserving the union wasn't the main intention of abolishing slavery. Lincoln wanted to abolish slavery earlier but held off because they felt some borderline states might flip to join the confederates. So without the "preserving the union" influence, slavery might have been abolished even sooner.

[Lord Shonus]

And... you're not seriously telling me that environmental problems we face today aren't as serious as they were in the past, are you?

They are not - every single environmental problem we face today was a problem (if an unknown one) in 1950, and at that time there were many very serious problems that are now extinct in most developed countries. For example, America's rivers are no longer flammable.

[Reelya]

We really don't have a sense of how toxic everything used to be before regulations came in.

http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2009/06/cuyahoga_river_fire_40_years_a.html

In the 1880's this river was described by the mayor as a "sewer", by the 1960's it was black trail of flammable sludge that could literally catch on fire. It is clean enough for kids to play in now. This was achieved through advocacy and journalism, not riots or protests.

[Frumple]

... yeah, it's kinda' nice how a half century ago the most immediately noticeable problems were stuff like mere burning rivers, as opposed to record breaking arctic melt, plastic-inundated chunks of water the size of texas, and measurably increasing oceanic acidity that may very well kill much of the commercial fishing populations. Among all the other stuff (please methane outgassing, don't poison the atmosphere ;_;).

Would that we could set the clock back to only having the river on fire, and have another fifty years to stop the majority of the biosphere from imploding

E: And yeah, I'm well aware most of the problems we have now had their foundations laid back then, or even earlier, but a few decades less built up inertia is a few decades less built up inertia, y'know?

[Reelya]

Sure, but we'd be in a worse place now if we never cleaned up the rivers.

And the Clean Water Act was the brainchild of congressman Louis Stokes, brother of Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes (who was appalled at the state of the river so advocated to everyone to clean it up). Where was the revolution or protests that lead to that law?

Also things like lead emissions in gasoline, and legally requiring catalytic converters in engines. Those laws have made a huge improvement in car pollution. Sure things are bad, but they'd be much worse if we never dealt with those problems. And those things were pushed by politicians, not civil disobedience.

[SalmonGod]

Don't forget impending extinction of lynchpin species like the honeybee, still accelerating rates of deforestation, and shit like mountaintop removal mining.

And how come every time I see this response to the environment thing come up, its always about one river in Ohio being flammable for a while.  Have you guys not noticed how goddamn many oil and coal sludge spills we've had lately?  And California doesn't even have water anymore to pollute. 

Will construct more informative and comprehensive responses when I'm home again.  Hate typing on a phone.

[Reelya]

about one river in Ohio being flammable for a while

But there wasn't just one river in that situation. That one river is only notable because it was the catalyst to do something about it. Other rivers were as bad. And by "a while" it means flammable for over 100 years. Cuyahoga river fires were recorded from the 1860's to the 1960's. Scant amount of public protests about this state of affairs. It took a politician who made it his pet project to finally clean it up.

Saying "yeah but it was just one river" seems like being deliberately obtuse too. If one river was that bad, it was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how much sludge was being dumped everywhere.

[i2amroy]

Would that we could set the clock back to only having the river on fire, and have another fifty years to stop the majority of the biosphere from imploding

We actually have the technology to stop global warming in it's tracks for 100 years or so right now. It would just cost tremendous amounts of money to launch and maintain sun-diversion satellites into space, and since we don't have the technology to build a working space elevator yet would probably rely on us building a space fountain, it's highly dangerous and expensive cousin (basically run a constant launching of projectiles up the building, if the projectiles ever stop the building collapses), which we do have the technology to build currently (though it would have enormous maintenance costs).

Peaceful advocacy over many years. Hearts and minds campaigns. Regardless of which event caused the advocacy groups to form, it's the peaceful advocacy which did the job of getting the laws changed. Repeated rioting would not have achieved that.

There's also been a very large amount of simply waiting until all of the people who remember the time before your advocacy have died of old age. For one of my "Social and Political Worlds" classes I looked at a large amount of revolutionary legal changes, and while many of them accomplished a fair amount during their run, the vast majority of them didn't have the more serious aspects of their "fight" really start to kick in until about 50 years later, at which point the majority of the politicians finally don't remember a time before people asking for equality or whatnot. It's one of the reasons why we suddenly had a resurgence of racial equality things changing in the mid and late 2000's; we finally hit the tipping point where the majority of important politicians didn't remember a time before racial segregation became unconstitutional.

[Descan]

I always wondered how large a (renewable powered, electro-magnet) rail-gun would be to get something into orbit, or if that wasn't possible, if it could be economical to make something that at least would get a space vehicle going pretty fast and cut down on fuel costs.

[i2amroy]

The words you are looking for are "mass driver", and usually their length for packages would be a handful of km (for humans they would be measured in hundreds of km, since you have to accelerate much more slowly, though ring designs could "reuse" a significant portion of that length). That said they're generally not the best idea due to a simple fact; air resistance increases proportionally with the velocity squared. That means that while a mass driver would be a great idea for space-based launches, it doesn't work nearly as efficiently as something like a space elevator would (which moves you upward slowly, and only then launches you). Should we decide to build one on earth it would:
1) Probably be located at the top of a tall mountain (thinner/less air to travel through = less air resistance), preferably close to the equator
2) Almost certainly be a compromise system, where we don't quite launch you to orbit, but we launch you part of the way there before your rockets get you the rest of the way.

They would work great for moon or asteroid based launches though, and they are one of the current designs being seriously considered for earth based space stuff.

[TheDarkStar]

I always wondered how large a (renewable powered, electro-magnet) rail-gun would be to get something into orbit, or if that wasn't possible, if it could be economical to make something that at least would get a space vehicle going pretty fast and cut down on fuel costs.

A cannon can't get things into orbit. It might be able to get things fast enough to get to space (where those things could use rocket engines to reach orbit) unless drag slows things down too much/causes things to melt. Maybe build it at the top of Mount Everest to avoid a lot of the atmosphere?

And ninja'd.

[Reelya]

Most designs for a rail gun space launcher have accelerations higher than humans can survive. The only viable ones have tracks at least 1-2 km long.

[Frumple]

... that'd be fine, though. The vast majority of what we want up there isn't human. Only some of it's particular squishy.

[Bohandas]

I always wondered how large a (renewable powered, electro-magnet) rail-gun would be to get something into orbit, or if that wasn't possible, if it could be economical to make something that at least would get a space vehicle going pretty fast and cut down on fuel costs.

A cannon can't get things into orbit. It might be able to get things fast enough to get to space (where those things could use rocket engines to reach orbit) unless drag slows things down too much/causes things to melt. Maybe build it at the top of Mount Everest to avoid a lot of the atmosphere?

And ninja'd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon

[Aseaheru]

That reminds me of an explanation on how orbits work from ICBM... Huh.