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Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment?

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Re: Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment?

#71

Post by carvink »

state_less wrote: post #12

I believe we'll eventually get our act together and survive with some pretty serious damage to the environment. When people are sufficiently desperate, you'll see more change. You can get ahead of the eventualities and help by learning how to survive without the use of fossil fuels which is difficult but more or less achievable today. Use electric bikes, cars and motorcycles. Work remotely. Try to find an efficient h…

Recently I heard someone talk about MPA, Marine Permaculture Arrays, that gave me a bit of optimism. There's plenty of pessimism, but we can choose where to focus. Imagine regenerating vast rivers of the fastest growing plant, kelp, not just along the coasts where warm water has been causing die-offs, but in the open ocean too.

MPA are floating kelp farms. Floating, but submerged, using wave action to power pumps that provide nutrient laden cold water to help the kelp grow. These pumps are like the flaps valves in your toilet tank. Kelp could provide biostock for fuel among other economically valuable commodities. There has been prototype work done in Indonesia and the Philippines. The next implementation looks like it will be in Tasmania. There are a couple of challenging technical obstacles - the cost of current (ocean current) sensors, and nutrient sensors is too high now to make this scale. Some innovation is needed to bring the cost of those sensors down. From some notes: The long range vision is to create an industry that will provide a range of ecosystem services that would supply food, fuel, fertilizer, fiber, farmaceuticals (nutraceuticals). Not just along the coasts, but in the open ocean. Think of it as biorefinery management. An MPA would likely have a 3 month service interval, and 3 year overhaul schedule to deal with things like biofouling that are part of maritime activities.

A one sq kilometer MPA might generate $1 million a year in value from kelp, maybe another $1 million a year from fish. The fish part is an unknown.

The best way to ride out an ocean storm is to submerge, like whales do. They could adjust bouyancy of an MPA if satellites tell them a storm is coming.

They intend to use mesoscale ocean current eddy shear levels to move MPA's to different locations in a region (imagine using foils to tack across the difference in current layers speeds, or to keep them circling in a small area, and want to develop cheaper marine vessel navigation automation [This means they won't need to anchor or tether the arrays to the bottom of the ocean]

Re: Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment?

#72

Post by bubblewrap »

Skunkleton wrote: post #26
netsharc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, how's the water in Michigan, and even "recycling" in the US means the trash gets shipped to Asia/Africa to be burned. It's "lack of information" or in this case being mislead by whoever promised them their recycling is contributing to being green...

I was so disappointed when I found out that this is how my recycling was being handled. I had this image in my head of my plastic waste being recirculated and reused that was so completely false. As I understand it, recycling is just the long road to the landfill.

I am currently reading a book on recycling that disputes that narrative (Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter). The main argument is that shipping a container of "recycling material" across the oceans costs real money (much more than a local landfill), that somebody paid. That somebody surely isn't paying for the junk just to burn it.

What is true is that recycling methods can sometimes be cruel. The example is a guy recycling Christmas lights in China. At first all they did was burn the plastic away to get to the copper. Later, when demand for plastic in China was also rising, they invented methods to also recycle the plastic.

Burning the plastic away was of course very dirty. And in other places (like Africa), dirty methods might be still more common.

Re: Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment?

#73

Post by bubblewrap »

loons2 wrote: post #3

Records are set every year. A record just means no observation was previously recorded. There's a catastrophe every generation that turns out to have been a false alarm by the time the next generation's catastrophe is fabricated. For instance, my wife was told "no homework tonight since we'll all be dead tomorrow anyway." (Cuban Missile Crisis) Around the time of the first Earth Day, the predictions of environmental…

I am a bit fascinated by the "Fin de Siècle" epoch. Those people were CORRECT in their pessimistic expectations. WWI and WWII happened soon after and killed many millions of people.

Then again, without history books and museums, you'd barely notice today that those ever took place. So maybe even that was not as much of a doomsday event as feared.

Re: Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment?

#74

Post by AstralStorm »

agentultra wrote: post #52
lancewiggs wrote: post #40

I'm terrified. For example: The ice cap melts are accelerating a lot faster than modelled. The mechanisms are not yet perfectly understood. The major flows of sea water (e.g. Gulf Stream) are at risk of changing completely with the temperature changes, which means dramatic changes in climate for Europe (colder), USA (warmer) (for example) are possible. Who knows - and the answer is nobody really. The acidification of…

Agreed. I think one of the ways we could survive this is to radically reform our philosophies and politics. We need to make amends with and reform indigenous rights. LBGTQ+ and women's rights. Abandon capitalism. Accept immigrant and migration. Change our perception of what it means to be happy from endless consumerism to self-actualization and social acceptance. We may have to scale back our modern lives: abandon in…

How can rights movements fix the environment?

The rest is indeed true, the problem being if you drop consumerism capitalism fails and at the same time people realise they are doing irrelevant things such as arguing on the internet instead of doing. Since even with currently more intelligent (though not experienced with revolts) masses the average is not great, things would turn ugly. (Including more terrible leaders.)

The primary problem is that outrage is extremely easy to divert and push. To any ends, including violent.

The other problems are that people still do not know to cooperate in general, and still prefer short term feel-good measures to long term results. (And ecology used to work on geological scales...)

Re: Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment?

#75

Post by 0lpbm »

jamesb93 wrote: post #70

To anyone reading this and thinking - well what can I do? Become vegetarian. TODAY. I eat 95% vegetarian now and I don't notice the difference whatsoever, if anything, I don't crave meaty foods anymore. The 5% is once a month kind of things such as pizza that have some ham on them. Changing to vegetarian is one of the best things you can do to help.

How about telling people to stop having kids? That's going to have a greater impact[1] in the long run than not eating meat.

Well, if you can't bring yourself to tell people that, what makes it all right to tell them to go vegetarian (TODAY)?

Prozelytizing your style of life is not how you get others to be more friendly to the environment.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-...

Re: Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment?

#76

Post by lcall »

(Copying a comment I just made on a related discussion).

I am in that I try to (within reason) minimize waste, pollution, energy consumption, meat use, etc: all for the Golden Rule and a clear conscience. And I am all for reducing pollution via laws as it makes the best sense using an open process and honesty. And I am active in an organization that goes to great lengths to try to help people in need, whether due to climate change or otherwise.

But having said that, I don't think climate change is a problem humanity is currently competent to solve, nor our biggest problem. I wrote more, here (a lightweight, hopefully skimmable, no-JS/no-ads site):

http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html

Re: Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment?

#77

Post by jamesb93 »

0lpbm wrote: post #75
jamesb93 wrote: post #70

To anyone reading this and thinking - well what can I do? Become vegetarian. TODAY. I eat 95% vegetarian now and I don't notice the difference whatsoever, if anything, I don't crave meaty foods anymore. The 5% is once a month kind of things such as pizza that have some ham on them. Changing to vegetarian is one of the best things you can do to help.

How about telling people to stop having kids? That's going to have a greater impact[1] in the long run than not eating meat. Well, if you can't bring yourself to tell people that, what makes it all right to tell them to go vegetarian (TODAY)? Prozelytizing your style of life is not how you get others to be more friendly to the environment. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-...

I personally don't want to have kids and don't see that changing. Although I don't see how your suggestion isn't 'prozelytizing' as well, it is much easier to change your diet (even partially) than to possibly de-rail massive life plans which may already be in motion. There are tonnes of great foods you can eat which are just vegetables and as a previously MASSIVE meat eater, I no longer miss it. Just to be clear I don't disagree with you, but one choice is not interchangeable with the other.
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