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What can a technologist do about climate change?

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Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#101

Post by jessriedel »

vox_mollis wrote: post #41
jessriedel wrote: post #8

I'd think there are better sources for reading about climate change than an author one who must admit "I didn’t mention nuclear because I don’t know much about it."

You consider an author honestly assessing the scope and limitations of his own knowledge, and disclosing it, a negative? Really? I'd wager that a good chunk of our problems today originates from policymaking on the basis of people who don't know, or don't admit, what they don't know.

Huh? I'm not criticizing the inclusion of that sentence, I'm criticizing the claimed scope of the piece. It's great to know lots of stuff about renewable energy, but its impossible to have a sufficiently informed opinion on climate change to start making claims about how our industrial society should re-tool without knowing about nuclear. Proper intellectual modesty does not shield you from this.

If the author wrote a long piece about how the best way to solve climate change was to quintuple the number of nuclear power plants and mentioned "I really don't know much about the solar industry", would you consider that an authoritative piece? Should we be reading it?

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#102

Post by haxel »

deoptimo wrote: post #47
haxel wrote: post #37

I look at the human-caused part of climate change as a billion or so smaller and easier-to-solve (but still hard) problems. Each one of these billions of problems is a person like you and me who acts without truly knowing what they are doing. Not in the sense of faking our way through life, but that we have only a superficial awareness of the consequences of our habitual or culturally-driven actions. This makes clima…

> So if we focused on developing a tool whose sole purpose was to give us quantified feedback on the consequences of our actions - much like how we use utility bills ... Utility bills and a carbon tax are the only feedback you need. All the rest is politics.

Does a carbon tax stop the slash-and-burn in Indonesia (for palm oil) and Brazil (for cattle)?

I agree that the full cost of what we buy needs to be included in its price or else we'll keep seeing the same problem, having only kicked it down the road a bit. But there are also many more large problems besides climate change that involve more than carbon dioxide emissions.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#104

Post by ommunist »

XorNot wrote: post #48
ommunist wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when number of publications became the measure of truth? There were numerous publications before Leonardo since Aristotle that flies have 8 legs. They all still have 6 though. Humans are nothing in impact comparing to a single volcano.

> Humans are nothing in impact comparing to a single volcano. This is a myth which you can easily disprove yourself with a little research. If a single volcano vastly dwarfs human eCO2 output, then surely measurements of atmosphere eCO2 levels in years volcanos erupted will show significant spikes in atmosphere eCO2 concentration? Sources: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/…

I actually did some research, and delivered a course in Environmental Legislation for three semesters at Moscow Industrial University. There are huge margins in estimations of both consumption and production of CO2. We lack actual data from one side and we have too many stakeholders with vested interest in "raising awareness about climate change", and selling more "cleaner" cars to take this subject seriously. Ever asked yourself how much of the CO2 footprint the "green" car have? Its way larger than Ford T.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#105

Post by LeifCarrotson »

KingMob wrote: post #87
jerf wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with making "lots" of money in a conventional manner, and donating it to an effective charity taking on the target task. In fact, in the spirit of the Kantian imperative, if everybody actually dropped their "merely productive" jobs and then tried to "directly solve poverty", we'd have just made the poverty problem much, much worse! You may want to Google the term "effecti…

Except that solution cannot scale here. If most people with the ability to solve these issues chase after dollars, then there's fewer people actually working on it. Remember, there's no plan B for earth. We have to overcommit our resources to ensure success, since we won't get many "iterations" to find "product/market" fit.

I disagree, that solution can scale very well. Specialization is at the core of how we live in such luxury compared to a few hundred years ago.

A handful of well-funded, well-educated experts working as a career on a hard, expensive problem can be much more effective than hundreds of well-intentioned but uninformed people who put in a few hours and a few dollars here and there.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#106

Post by snowwrestler »

Jemaclus wrote: post #57

I've asked this question a few times but haven't really gotten a satisfactory answer. There are a lot of what I might call "epic problems" out there. Malaria, homelessness, HIV, refugees, war, climate change, income inequality, gender inequality, hate crimes. I don't know anything about creating vaccines or cures for malaria or HIV. I don't have a degree in social work or behavior science. I don't have any experience…

Most epic problems are really social problems. That is, we know how to prevent and treat malaria, we have plenty of land and homes, we know how to prevent and treat AIDS, we have plenty of places for refugees to live, we know how to stop contributing to man-made climate change, etc.

Social problems need social solutions. That means a lot of people working together to enact or expand the solutions that we already know exist.

If you're super rich like Bill Gates, you can bring people together with money. The Gates Foundation funds a LOT of projects that employ a lot of staff and volunteers, and they market the heck out of them so a lot of other people know it's happening.

I'm not super rich, and neither are you. So we need to find ways to come together with other like-minded folks to push the rest of humanity to help fix the problem.

One way this happens is politics--run for office to attract popular support, or find a candidate who you agree with and support them.

But the real work of social change happens between elections, and the real platforms are not political parties, but mission-driven membership organizations. In the U.S. they're often called nonprofits, NGOs, institutes, foundations, etc.

So: want to make a difference on an epic problem? Find one or more mission-driven organizations working that problem, and get involved. Sign up for their alerts, give them money, go to events, share their social messaging, volunteer, or even go work for them.

I will say that the nonprofit world is, in general, well behind even big corporations when it comes to using software and technology. You know how the U.S. federal government has initiatives like the Digital Service and 18F to try to foster a modern tech mindset? Most nonprofits need that too.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#107

Post by mildweed »

re: "Coordination (consuming when?)"

Z-Wave already has ADR (Automated Demand Response) capabilities. http://z-wavealliance.org/energy-management/

So the protocol (OpenADR2.0a) is defined, the messaging is available (from a DRAS), and the consumer client is listening (Z-Wave). We just need more appliances to build ADR integrations to Z-Wave.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#108

Post by DennisP »

danieltillett wrote: post #38
nostromo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is low-carbon, but it's not renewable. Earth has a set amount of uranium that is destroyed when creating energy. Currently we have about 200 years of uranium available for economical extraction. But if we tried to replace all coal with nuclear, we would be out within a few decades. Then we'd need to move to other non-renewable materials (thorium?) or start mining astroids. http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar…

Nuclear is not really low carbon when you take into account the amount of concrete you need to build a modern reactor. Unless we have a major breakthrough in mining uranium or we actually manage to make breeder reactors safe and cost effective then nuclear is not really a viable option. Edit. I should have been more precise in my language. By low carbon I am meaning minimal carbon, not just lower carbon. Natural gas…

It's less than the concrete for an equivalent amount of wind power. Neither is all that significant compared to fossil fuels.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#109

Post by jbrande »

oberstein wrote: post #86

Buy iron, dump in ocean. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization ) Donate to geoengineering efforts and lobbying against insane moratoriums against geoengineering efforts.

Environmental 'solutions' have the unfortunate habit of being severely under researched and causing further, if not greater, damage.

Besides, that is a solution for the symptom, not the disease.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#110

Post by danieltillett »

sliverstorm wrote: post #92
Jemaclus wrote: post #57

I've asked this question a few times but haven't really gotten a satisfactory answer. There are a lot of what I might call "epic problems" out there. Malaria, homelessness, HIV, refugees, war, climate change, income inequality, gender inequality, hate crimes. I don't know anything about creating vaccines or cures for malaria or HIV. I don't have a degree in social work or behavior science. I don't have any experience…

Especially for social problems, my working theory is work to make people's lives better. A rising tide lifts all boats. The poor of today seem to be better off than the poor of two hundred years ago, as many things (including food) are available cheaper than ever. How can technology specifically help? The first thing that comes to mind- The entry of women into the workforce and subsequent advances in gender equality…

Women have always been in the workforce - the only change over the last century that has occurred is middle and upper middle class women have entered the workforce. Working class women have never not worked.
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