Ride your bike to work and encourage others to do likewise. Might be a small gesture, but it's something you can do tomorrow.
Yep, in the 1973 Scientific American, they compared Kcal/Kg/Km of different modes of transport. Bike vs 40x over a Car.
What can a technologist do about climate change?
241–250 of 293 posts
Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?
#242I'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…
> (If anyone doesn't get how this works, I can explain.)
would you mind explaining me?
Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> (If anyone doesn't get how this works, I can explain.) would you mind explaining me?
Looks like he put some links elsewhere in this thread, but I'm in a very similar situation with the same goal -- 25, saving up, hoping to "retire" in my early-to-mid 30s at the latest -- so here's how I look at it. The core idea and assumption is: you can get on average at least 5% annual growth by investing your savings instead of stuffing it in a bank account or under your mattress. As long as you can live on less than that per year, you don't have to work.
For me I'd be fine living at $20k/yr. This makes my target goal in savings to be around $500k. So if you have $500k invested this January, by next January you should have $525k. As long as you can live on less than 5%, typically at most 4% ($20k) per year, then next January you withdraw your $20k and your total invested savings is $505k. One year later, that grows by 5% again, to $525,250. Take your $20k (which is now less than 4%), repeat until you die or we hit the Singularity. :)
I think you need buffer room to handle the core assumption, though, and this is ignoring taxes and other things. For instance, Vanguard hasn't been doing that well for the past 2 years, though it will probably do better and the 10 year average yearly return from 2013 to 2023 will almost certainly be higher than 5%. You can buffer yourself against economic slumps by having more money or living more frugally -- additionally, there's the possibility of entering into the real estate business once you have some initial capital, that may also be a (somewhat risky) way of hedging since you may nominally be $1.5m in debt from your mortgaged properties, but as long as rent exceeding mortgage+repairs keeps coming in and the n-plex doesn't massively depreciate in value you have a steady stream of income that's independent of your savings that you could sell if needed to wipe away your debt.
Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?
#244The best you can do is lobby for denser development and ending the rules that force a suburban character. Suburbs are more wasteful than cities. Riding a bike to work generates less pollution than a car. Buildings themselves are more efficiently insulated when it's 100 units on a block vs. 100 single family homes on 50 acres. Deliveries can use more efficient and less polluting forms of transport, such as rail, more…
I totally agree with your sentiment. But what do you mean by "ending the rules that force a suburban character".
Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If that was confusing, all I'm recommending is to learn more about it for now, since he says he does not know much. My reasoning is that any technology that can produce an enormous amount of energy without burning hydrocarbons is worth more than a little consideration, even if it presents serious engineering and regulatory challenges, and especially to anyone who is concerned about carbon emissions.
I agree, and I think regulatory is the key word with nuclear. Cost overruns and delays are due to the public's and government's ignorance on nuclear energy precipitating disproportionate regulations and hurdles. Nuclear, by far, represents the way forward if people could get over the irrational fears tied to the words "radiation" and "nuclear". It could be developed safely and less costly if we put up the resources. We need more nuclear physicists and engineers in the U.S. and the world.
Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
500k is enough for retirement? are you going to live in a cheap city?
It's enough for me to live the way I live right now, indefinitely. I currently live in silicon valley paying very high rent ($1100/mo). If I didn't want to work I could live somewhere a lot cheaper. "Retirement" means different things to different people. I was talking about financial independence, which means I can choose to retire, but more likely it will mean I find work I enjoy more, without considering the pay a…
good luck! i also hope to have 500k net worth soon too, probably in a few years. do you anticipate marrying and having a house soon?
Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?
#247The best you can do is lobby for denser development and ending the rules that force a suburban character. Suburbs are more wasteful than cities. Riding a bike to work generates less pollution than a car. Buildings themselves are more efficiently insulated when it's 100 units on a block vs. 100 single family homes on 50 acres. Deliveries can use more efficient and less polluting forms of transport, such as rail, more…
How do you convince the supposedly "green" SF population that SF should really look more like Hong Kong?
Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?
#248Earlier 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…
Funny enough, there’s a link at the top of Bret’s essay here to an article describing how the community/movement excited about “effective altruism” has gone off the deep end worrying about the singularity and strong AI (not to mention proselytizing / self promotion) while ignoring more obvious concerns like poverty or climate change. http://www.vox.com/2015/8/10/9124145/effective-altruism-glob... > Effective altruism…
Loud minority != actual majority.
Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?
#249This is really awesome, both layout wise and for it's data visualizations. I'm a huge fan of Brett's work and this seems like it fits right in with his other exposes. That said, anything that doesn't discuss the global shipping industry (or more abstractly, emissions due to globalized trade), nuclear power, and solutions for developing countries* is missing more than half of the discussion (I'd personally argue it's…
Sorry, but the global shipping/maritime industry is only responsible for like 5%, maybe less, of emissions, as nasty as bunkers are, so it looks like you're the one staring at a tree.
Like you mentioned, the real concern here is China and India's ability to grow their power generation stack using renewables rather than fossil fuels. Whether or not some more voyages take place will be trivial compared to the impact of China/India's power generation.
Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What? So these otherwise very intelligent people, don't see the flaw with discrediting their own profession for the sake of getting respect? You think that is what's going on?