Show this to any conservative who claims that global warming has nothing to do with human activity. I guess it's just a giant coincidence that we live in the time of the highest CO2 concentration in millions of years? And the highest disappearance of species?
We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2
161–170 of 264 posts
Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2
#162Does anyone have ideas on how a mid-career software developer can switch gears into the clean energy/climate change industry, to do something to help? I've come to think that climate change will be humanity's defining moment, and that we'll all be suffering greatly come mid-to-late-century. I want to do what I can to put my professional skills to use in helping. But I'm not sure where to even begin.
> Does anyone have ideas on how a mid-career software developer can switch gears into the clean energy/climate change industry, to do something to help?
I'm in it right now. The best thing to do right now is to exert as much political pressure, because half the workplaces you're thinking of joining are in the current administration's crosshairs.
Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2
#163I don't know much about climate science, but won't plants multiply and grow faster until we eventually hit a new equilibrium CO2 level? I guess the only danger is reaching thermal runaway before that happens? Then again, earth CO2 levels have been far higher in the past without signs that it killed off much life on Earth. Is rising CO2 that dangerous? Don't humans already have effective ways to reduce surface heating…
Liebig's Law of the Minimum describes why you can't count on plant growth to save us.
Any given plant's growth is constrained by something. Might be sunlight, water, phosphorous, nitrogen, or potassium. The last 3 are of course the main ingredients in fertilizers.
If a plant needs phosphorous to speed its growth, adding nitrogen won't help. And vise versa. What ever the Liebig Minimum, that's what you have to add to increase the growth, and you have to add enough of it for another factor to become the Liebig minimum.
Very few plants out there are CO2-constrained.
Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't know much about climate science ... I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. Respectfully, is this a mindset you apply to other aspects of your life? Let's say you leased an apartment in a large building, and after an inspection, numerous structural engineers said the building was in danger of collapse. Would you say "I don't know much about engineering, but I'm s…
Not quite the same. Climate scientists are notoriously bad at predicting consequences of climate change - kind of like how meteorologists are often bad at predicting the weather. Why is it okay to be skeptical of what meteorologists are predicting, but not okay to be skeptical of what climate scientists are predicting? It's one thing to be skeptical of sciences that have stood the test of time like civil engineering…
Climate predictions made in 1989 versus today:
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v7/n 3/full/nclimate3224.html?WT.feed_name=subjects_climate-sciences
Climate models are actually better than meteorological models, but they predict things decades out.
Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2
#165There is an aspect that is perhaps not very well communicated. Higher the environmental CO2 level, more of it you need to dilute the air in the confined environment (i.e. buildings) to the desired level. This means that you have to move more air that will require more energy directly but also indirectly through higher heating/cooling need. It will also decrease the comfort due to more tangible airflow.
I'm interested by your comment, but I can't figure out what you are intending to say. Why do you need to dilute CO2?
Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, here's my prediction: climate change is real, but 100 years from now it won't turn out to be as apocalyptic as the experts claimed it will be. People will start reducing waste once they start seeing real consequences and technological solutions will emerge as exponentially more people start thinking about the problem each year. In the meantime, other factors will contribute to our downfall much faster than clim…
> Well, here's my prediction: climate change is real, but 100 years from now it won't turn out to be as apocalyptic as the experts claimed it will be. What evidence are you basing that on?
Mostly intuition. I don't buy into hype as quickly as others because I've seen the scientific community in various diverse fields go through the hype cycle many times over many decades.
A new problem is discovered (i.e. the earth can't sustain the current birth rate forever). The problem is hyped up[1] in an effort to find a solution (abortions -> Zero Population Growth[2]). Many in the science community buy into the hype, crunch numbers, and make dire predictions. Public policies in the 70s change in response to this evidence. ZP deniers are shamed for having large families and rejecting scientific consensus. Decades pass and the predictions don't happen. People start examining the evidence with more scrutiny and with observed data in hand retroactively debunk a lot of the assumptions made. The hype dies and everyone forgets it ever happened. So I'm sorry if I don't instantly drop everything to make the hype of the day my top priority, but a lot of hyped problems don't last more than a few decades. If climate change is still being seriously discussed in 2036 (30 years after "An Inconvenient Truth" was published) maybe I'll take it a little more seriously.
Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2
#167Does anyone have ideas on how a mid-career software developer can switch gears into the clean energy/climate change industry, to do something to help? I've come to think that climate change will be humanity's defining moment, and that we'll all be suffering greatly come mid-to-late-century. I want to do what I can to put my professional skills to use in helping. But I'm not sure where to even begin.
> Does anyone have ideas on how a mid-career software developer can switch gears into the clean energy/climate change industry, to do something to help It's easy. - Stop flying. - Eat less meat. - Buy less stuff. - Use less energy.
I was surprised by "stop flying" so I ran a calculator [0], not the most authoritative-looking thing in the world but it's trying to sell me offset credits, so if anything it's an overestimate.
Using 160kwh/month from PG&E for my 600sqft apartment, driving 12 miles/weekday on a mix of compact hatchback and small-displacement motorcycle, and flying round-trip across the country roughly once a year, I apparently have a carbon footprint of 1.59 metric tons.
That's less than 8% the US average, and below the long-term worldwide target of 2 metric tons.
That single trip home for Christmas has more carbon impact (0.63 metric tons) than an entire year of motorcycle commuting (0.49 metric tons)!
I'm also making no deliberate sacrifices or trying at all to live a low-carbon-emissions lifestyle, it just kind of happens by default when you're living in the Bay Area (small dwellings, low HVAC requirements, short drives because the freeway is even worse than public transit for long distances, etc). So... put "live in or near a big city" on that list?
[0] http://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=8
Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to be clear, you're advocating dishonesty and deception--essentially, infiltration, a tactic used in espionage. This lies in stark contrast to the idea that progress comes by openly researching, and debating, and convincing one's opponents with reasoned arguments and evidence. If you have to deceive people to win, are you really "on the right side"? Or is everyone else just so stupid that you have no choice? You…
Infiltration? Espionage? lol seriously? The Republicans shamelessly flaunt their positions and policies. Dishonesty and deception? Again, lolwut. Parties are collections of people, they do not stand for specific ideas. Anyone that gets on the Republican membership list is, by definition, a Republican. Example A: Trump. Signing up to a different party sounds exactly like what you're describing. Open the door to intell…
I don't know how you expect me to take you seriously with "lolwut." But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt once.
> The Republicans shamelessly flaunt their positions and policies.
What is the point of this statement? Do you mean to say that Democrats don't do that? Or is it okay that they do, because you agree with them? In which case it's entirely hypocritical to say that, criticizing your opponents for doing exactly what you do, and a form of intellectual dishonesty.
> Dishonesty and deception? Again, lolwut. Parties are collections of people, they do not stand for specific ideas. Anyone that gets on the Republican membership list is, by definition, a Republican. Example A: Trump.
If I, as a citizen, register as a member of Party A, and vote in their primaries for candidates that lean toward my preferences--and then, come election time, go to the polls and vote for the candidate of Party B, as I intended to from the beginning--am I participating honestly in the political process? Or am I pretending to be a member of Party A so I can influence Party A to reduce the difference between the parties?
If a government sends an operative to another nation, to secretly work for another nation's government, and influence them to lean toward the policies they prefer, is that "getting on the membership list" of that "collection of people"? Is it honestly participating in the diplomatic process? Or is it infiltration, a form of espionage?
If a corporation sends an employee to get a job at a competitor and send back copies of plans for the competitor's competing products, is that merely "getting on the membership list" of that "collection of people" at that company? Or is it industrial espionage?
> Signing up to a different party sounds exactly like what you're describing. Open the door to intellectual conversations with people from different social spheres, force confrontations between real person with real beliefs instead of strawmen.
Either you misunderstand the point and we are talking past each other, or you are the one tearing down strawmen.
Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2
#169Re: We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're stretching the analogy a bit too far there... We know that increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 will result in higher temperatures (the mechanism is well understood, and the IPCC models have done a good job of predicting that over the past couple decades), we also know rising temperatures will result in rising sea levels (again, we have empirically observed this happening at rates consistent with our u…
A more realistic analogy would be if the engineer said it's very likely that the California coast will be hit with an earthquake sometime in the next 100 years, but we have no idea when, which city, or how severe it will be. The safe thing to do would be to stop building things there altogether, but we could also try raising taxes and adding building regulations, making it impossibly expensive to live and work there.…
Someone replied to me and deleted it, and I don't want to waste the time I spent writing a response, so here it is:
No, that wasn't my claim. If I have a claim, it's that, instead of simply moving away, people keep building up an active seismic fault that's likely to suffer a catastrophic earthquake in the near future. Even high taxes (some of which funded the policy piece you cited) and massively increased costs of construction (such as proposed in the policy piece you cited) aren't incentive enough to stop.
This aspect of human behavior is worth remembering when someone suggests similar "incentives" to address climate change. It's trying to incentivize the same mindset that would rather build cities out of springs and pendulums than move to stable land.
We should face the reality that humans will eventually deal with the negative side of climate change using (not so?) metaphorical springs, levers, stilts, and who-knows-what, and it will be okay.
I don't click Forbes links, but from the URL it looks like it's about a hoax bill that was proposed for PR purposes. Not interested.