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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?

#111

Post by cies »

Great piece. I was thinking: "what programmers can do?" And came up with the "use compiled languages" answer.

I compare Ruby and Haskell, as that's what I have experience with; but I expect it to hold true for any Ruby/Python/Java/etc vs C/C++/Haskell/Go/Rust/etc shootout.

Just some typical numbers:

Disk space to house one app deployment: 800MB Ruby/Rails vs 80MB Haskell/Yesod. Memory consumption of one instance: 350MB Ruby/Rails vs Especially for large scale apps this makes a difference. Just through metal at it, is not a sustainable answer. The Googles and FBs know this; and they compile a lot.

I think going compiled is going green with your software in many cases; especially on scale.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#112

Post by pacifist »

Pxtl wrote: post #81

I'm disappointed that the one item most accessible to the software/consumer-electronics world: telecommuting, doesn't appear much in the article. Giving people the tools to properly manage a remote team (including non-experts that are unaccustomed to remoting) is something we can do and that will take commuters off the roads.

This right here. I'm using a product that I helped build to earn my living from 500 miles away. I walk everywhere. I drive biodiesel but not much. I filled the tank last winter and still have a half tank.

We can set things up so we don't need to drive to get our work done.

Let's do it.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#113

Post by tomp »

davedx wrote: post #74

I did considerable research into jobs where I would have the opportunity to help with climate change while I was a freelancer. I came up with a short list of companies, evaluated on a somewhat subjective basis of "effectiveness". (I read an essay by Bill Gates where he explained his investment strategies to "making the world a better place" were based on applying financial input where it had the most leverage.) Most…

May I ask, how did you go around searching for companies like this?

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#114

Post by merpnderp »

nostromo wrote: post #30
pc86 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to figure out why nuclear is lumped in with fossil fuels.

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…

Peak uranium is about as believable as peak oil. And given that uranium is a tiny fraction on the operating cost of a nuclear plant, it is viable at much higher prices. Which means much lower yield ores can be used for fuel. |

And then there is thorium, which we have more of than we know what to do with.

Then there's mining Uranium from the Ocean which puts a ceiling on the price of Uranium at 15x the current price. Economically unfeasible today, but it is the max it could ever cost.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-th...

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#115

Post by grenzbegriff »

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…

I think about the same things and ask the same question.

My current plan is to save most of my money so I can reach financial independence very early. I'm 25 now, I'll be financially independent by 27, meaning I'll have enough money invested to live indefinitely on interest/dividends. My total expenses/spending is $25k/year and I'm sure I can keep them there if I want to. Most people who start making a silicon valley software engineer salary right out of college could be financially independent by 30 if they wanted to. It's just a math equation of spending, income, and compound interest that most people have never considered. (If anyone doesn't get how this works, I can explain.)

Once I'm financially independent, I no longer have to worry about money for myself, so I can fully commit to finding a better way to use my time. This will probably mean meeting and talking to lots of people who are doing stuff in the world and looking for an opportunity that I'm excited about helping with, and that's a good fit for my skills. This might mean writing more code or it might not, I can learn new things too. I might come to the conclusion that continuing to be a software engineer making a silicon valley salary, living frugally and donating all my extra money is the most beneficial thing I can do, but I wouldn't be surprised if I find something better.

Meanwhile, while I'm working and saving all this money, I get to be an example of someone who is frugal, healthy, happy, and incredibly excited about and enjoying life, to my friends and anyone I meet. I can inspire other people who are in similar circumstances to myself, to reduce their spending and resource consumption while still being happy. Demonstrating to people that sustainable happy lives are possible and much more fun than "normal" consumerism/consumption is something I'm really excited about.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#116

Post by vixen99 »

drewrv wrote: post #64
cpr wrote: post #9

I still like Burt Rutan's take on the AGW question ( http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/EngrCritique.AGW-Science.v4.3.pdf ). He looks at it as an engineer, using generally-accepted data. His conclusion is that the alarmists are wrong.

I haven't read this whole thing but by just by skimming it I find all the usual denialist BS with some engineer hubris mixed in. There's the claim that CO2 isn't bad, it's needed for life. This is a common among denialists, ignoring the fact that lots of things which are needed for life are also unhealthy in large quantities. There's the claim that far back in the earths history CO2 levels were higher, ignoring the f…

Never mind all this rhetoric. Where is the beef i.e., where is the data that you believe shows that global temperatures have been increasing more than would be reasonably expected by random natural variation?

Here's an opportunity to demonstrate what fools the 'denialists' are and moreover win $100,000 into the bargain.

http://www.informath.org/Contest1000.htm

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#117

Post by tomp »

nostromo wrote: post #30
pc86 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to figure out why nuclear is lumped in with fossil fuels.

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 low-carbon, but it's not renewable.

So is the sun.

But seriously, the amount of fissile fuel we have available greatly would suffice for hundreds of years of energy, and leave very little waste, if we only invested in nuclear technologies a bit more.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#118

Post by oberstein »

jbrande wrote: post #109
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.

When you have treated all symptoms and stopped them from arising again, the disease is effectively cured even if you still carry it. The final solution will be complete mastery over our planetary weather, it's better we do that sooner than later. Tsunami and earthquake deaths total far above terrorism deaths, we only need funding to fight terrorism to the extent that they get in the way of building to that final solution. Even if we "fix" the climate change disease (say perhaps by wiping out industrial-era and beyond humanity, the disease?) those other natural phenomena will still be killing many.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#119

Post by pjc50 »

guscost wrote: post #13

While I don't really agree with the premise, my initial impression is that this should get ten upvotes for being so well reasoned and executed. Amazing work, I'm confident a lot of good will come of it. One recommendation, at your earliest convenience do something about this: > I didn’t mention nuclear because I don’t know much about it.

Nuclear generates a lot of controversy. On paper it looks great; in practice there it turns out to be very expensive or have nasty problems buried in the details. For example, molten salt reactors have corrosion and reprocessing problems.

I don't blame the author for refusing to take a position on nuclear.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#120

Post by hueving »

epistasis wrote: post #43
cpr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fairly ad hominem. Can you give some examples?

Interesting, you find my comment to be fairly ad hominem but you don't the slide deck you shared? Basically all the "data" and arguments that he's presenting are cherry picked to be on the edge of plausibility, but as soon as you poke at them at all they fall part. It's really just a standard piece of denialist schlock. For example on slide 4 look at his plot and compare to the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.or…

>Something balanced like the IPCC will be far more solid information, with proper citations, that can be backed up.

How could an organization dedicated to a topic filled with people who dedicated their life to said topic be trusted to have a balanced view of whether or not that topic has an impact? Just purely from a conflict of interest perspective, it seems similar to asking for a balanced view of religion from the 'international panel of priests and pastors'.

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