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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?

#121

Post by ommunist »

Daishiman wrote: post #97
ommunist wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically all that system is not designed to find the truth. It is designed to find more funding to support itself. I know that, because I did that myself. A single set of glacial cores from Greenland tells you more that all that satellite BS. If you remotely closely familiar with principles of climatic modelling, you 'd be rotfl, looking at someone trying to validate or backtrace that models. Because you'd be famil…

Yeah, your assertion doesn't seem to be validated at all. Not only do Jason Box's reconstructions refute that, but the reality is that with the current temperatures we have in Greenland the level of glacial melt is unprecedented. If not, mind explaining to us how exactly, if average temperatures have been higher in Greenland, then it hasn't experienced the melt it's going through right now? https://www.skepticalscien…

Well, climate change this than: http://yer.io/img/globalwarm-this.png

And global warm that: http://yer.io/img/gisp-last-10000-new.png

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#122

Post by pjc50 »

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.

Telecommuting is very much a sociopolitical problem. Too many work places are so bad at evaluating work they end up evaluating the length of time employees spend in the office instead.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#123

Post by danieltillett »

DennisP wrote: post #108
danieltillett wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not just the the total mass of concrete needed, it is the technical requirements and the difficulty of building the nuclear structures that uses massive amounts of carbon derived energy.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#124

Post by hueving »

nanny wrote: post #69
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."

Get lost. You're using a textbook ad hominem argument, while the author you're talking about has boatloads of evidence and put a lot of work into this page, and you think it's bad thing that he's humble enough to admit that he was a lack of knowledge on one particular topic? That just boggles my mind.

How so? Does the author not suggest the elimination of nuclear even though he has no knowledge of it?

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#125

Post by jbrande »

I like the increasing focus on climate change but what about any one of of the other really damaging things we are doing? Acid Mine drainage, for one, is heavily related to the tech world with the ever growing demand for more materials to build our hardware.

Let's figure out how to build electronics & devices in a manner that enables systemic recycling and has more reasonable power costs. As it is, we just bury our old tech under a pile of trash and go mine some more. That is not a sustainable or in my opinion, sane, practice.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#126

Post by davedx »

tomp wrote: post #113
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?

Of course.

1. I Googled, a LOT. "cleantech jobs", "cleantech netherlands", "green tech jobs", etc. etc. etc.

2. I started reading sites like cleantechnica.

3. I got a few leads from this site: http://www.climate-kic.org/

4. Jobs I'd found already, I looked up the companies I already knew about then followed the "companies like this" links on LinkedIn.

5. Followed lots of people in clean tech/environmentalism on Twitter. Not sure if I found anything this way, though.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#127

Post by XorNot »

ommunist wrote: post #104
XorNot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

But you'll note, again, that the data I referred to isn't about what cars do or do not emit specifically. It is about whether volcanic eruptions track with significant increases in CO2 in the atmosphere.

Which they do not.

Where as your sources are still absent.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#128

Post by snowwrestler »

criddell wrote: post #78
pavlov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What terrible arguments: The temperature trend is so slight that, were the global average temperature change which has taken place during the 20th and 21st centuries were to occur in an ordinary room, most of the people in the room would be unaware of it. Well, yes, people are bad at noticing gradually increasing temperatures. A room full of people can heat up from 23°C to 26°C without most people noticing. That has…

> That has nothing to do with whether a global temperature increase of 3 degrees would be healthy for the planet. Don't leave us hanging here!

It helps to think about temperature as what it really measures: the amount of energy stored in the system.

A small room that increases by a few degrees is storing only slightly more energy. Humans won't really notice it.

A global biosphere is a much larger volume, so a few degrees stores much more energy, compared to the human scale. And that energy is what powers our weather.

Can you think of a weather system you would enjoy with more energy powering it? Stronger storms, stronger winds, greater temperature fluctuations, greater precipitation fluctuations, greater groundwater fluctuations, etc.

Ultimately "the planet" will be just fine under those circumstances, but human society might suffer.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#129

Post by skadamat »

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.

Don't be disappointed! I think the point of this call to action is to raise awareness and keep the discussion going, not to mention every single solution.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#130

Post by rmchugh »

haxel wrote: post #66
rmchugh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's problematic to focus exclusively on individual responsibility for averting climate change. Climate change is a massive global problem, intimately related to the structure of the global economy. The scale of the problem and the changes needed to mitigate it are thus far beyond the reach of any individual consumer. Problems at this scale can only be addressed by nation states and transnational actors, as w…

You say global economy and then you say far beyond the reach of individual consumers. Yet the global economy is by definition composed of the demands of individual consumers. You also say that top-down hasn't been working very well and so we may be running out of time. Isn't that a strong signal that we should look at a different approach? As technologists, we can plainly see the power of our mobile computers and the…

I don't think advertisement works that well. While you may convince a small minority of consumers to consume in a climate conscious way, I sincerely doubt that it would appeal to the vast majority. For example, you would need to persuade people not to eat meat, not to fly, not to purchase fresh food that has been transported by air, not to drive cars driven by fossil fuels etc etc. These are all things that make people's lives more enjoyable (for the most part), so you are asking people to act against their immediate self-interest. I don't think advertising is sufficient for this. What would be more effective is a carbon tax on consumer goods, which would drive the price of such goods up dramatically. But this would require government action.

As for solutions, I don't claim to have all the answers. I do think that the divestments movement is a very good idea, as is direct action against the most polluting industries (for example, a recent action to shut down Europe's largest coal mine).

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