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The Uninhabitable Earth

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Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#241

Post by gorkonsine »

enraged_camel wrote: post #149
NickM wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the handful of climate change deniers that's the problem. It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy. Well, suppose all the people who want to be green go ahead and cut back to one car, go vegetarian, live in a smaller house, etc. etc. Maybe if everyone is really dedicated, we c…

>>Don't put solar panels on your house out of a personal sense of guilt about your own emissions, put them on your house because it grows the market for solar, stimulates research into better panels, and helps push forward the economies of scale that are needed to make renewables cost competitive with fossil fuels Or don't live in a house in the suburbs. Opt for medium or high-density residential areas, which are far…

They are, but they're also frequently far more expensive, and downright unaffordable to many people compared to much larger homes in more rural areas. In the big city near me, a little condo in a high-rise can easily cost $400k. But a couple hours away from the city I can buy a house for $50k or $75k. People who have no hope of earning enough money for a $400k condo (even though jobs in the city usually pay a little more) can frequently afford one of those rural properties.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#242

Post by gorkonsine »

scottLobster wrote: post #216
gorkonsine wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need to move more than 3 kids, you need to get a minivan. But most suburban people don't, they get the more gas-guzzling SUVs instead. Minivans can also haul a lot more cargo; SUVs are generally rather poor at that. For most people who rarely move cargo, and don't have so many kids, a much more sensible solution is to get a small/midsize car, and use a utility trailer when you need to move things. My economy c…

Depends on the SUV. Minivans are fine, I grew up riding in one. Trailers are cool if you have a car with a hitch. I'm not even sure if my sedan's even capable of having a hitch attached without some sort of bumper replacement. Regardless, my point isn't that SUVs are the perfect solution, just that they have their uses. Could those uses be accomplished by something slightly more efficient? Maybe, but that doesn't mak…

>Depends on the SUV.

No, it doesn't. The requirement is more than 3 kids. A small or midsize SUV has the same passenger capacity as a sedan (5: 2 in front, 3 in back), so now you're talking about a large 3-row SUV. There's no possible way a large 3-row SUV gets better efficiency than a typical minivan.

> Trailers are cool if you have a car with a hitch. I'm not even sure if my sedan's even capable of having a hitch attached without some sort of bumper replacement.

Wrong. Any normal sedan has a hitch available. Check out Curt, Hidden Hitch, Reese, etc. etrailer.com carries most makes. I'd be surprised if you could find any car other than maybe a Smart which doesn't have a hitch available. Even a Prius has a hitch available.

>Regardless, my point isn't that SUVs are the perfect solution, just that they have their uses.

No, they really don't, except for off-roading, which isn't something you need to do on a regular basis anyway unless you're some kind of far-out rural dweller (and even there, a Subaru will probably work just fine). Other vehicles can do the same job but much better. People: minivan. Cargo: 4x8 or 5x8 utility trailer. Worse, SUVs are dangerous: they're far more prone to rolling over, and can be rolled even by high winds.

>Case in point, if 10 years from now we have electric SUVs that are completely powered by solar/wind/clean energy

Why would you want something so inferior, even if you could reduce the energy requirement? And it's still never going to be that low. Electric is better, but not that much better: hundreds of millions of people driving eSUVs is still far more energy than those same people driving e-cars. You can't get around the basic laws of physics: more mass and higher wind resistance = more energy.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#243

Post by gorkonsine »

cagenut wrote: post #28
dota_fanatic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of drastic change should one take? Not having kids, OK, drastic but doable. Cutting out meat, driving less, etc, OK. But what about the rest of the production chain that assumes you're the same as everyone else (whom continues to use and depend on that production chain), which is an ocean of waste compared to what any single person can do? We can individually push the needle very slightly, but it does nothi…

The energy consumption (and therefore carbon emissions) per capita in the west/US comes almost entirely from the feedback loop between single-family-detached housing and the car-or-two it takes to live in that kind of sprawled out lifestyle. Put another way, Transportation and Housing (heating & cooling) are the #1 and #2 sources of carbon emissions for suburban, exurban and rural dwellers. People who simply live in…

>So the #1 thing an American can do to fight climate change is be "pro-city". Move there.

I love the idea of higher-density living, the problem is that it's simply unaffordable for a large part of the population. They can only afford houses with yards and several feet of air-gap, as you put it. How do you propose to fix this?

For example, look at Japan. In Tokyo, you can rent a small (very small) efficiency apartment for perhaps $500, according to what I hear on YouTube. A larger one big enough for a couple might be $900 or $1000. Such a place will be clean, safe, and just a few minutes' walk from the subway. Now look at NYC: there's no possible way you'll find something to rent at that price in a place that's at all safe. So telling people to "move there" is really rather asinine; are you going to pay me $1500/month so I can afford a livable apartment in Manhattan? (I'll make up the other $1000 on my own, your $1500 is a subsidy)

As long as the property owners in a municipality have all the power over building and density, we're going to have this problem.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#244

Post by gorkonsine »

Caveman_Coder wrote: post #215
all_usernames wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd very much like my next employer to be one that is actively working toward climate solutions, and has a large leverage. Any suggestions? Obvious choices would be Tesla (any large automaker with a serious electric program), or a political organization with sane and pragmatic environmental goals.

If you're in the US, I'd check out some of the national laboratories: https://science.energy.gov/laboratories/

US Government research jobs these days really don't get anything done. You'll spend a career there shuffling paper and accomplishing zero.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#245

Post by gorkonsine »

anon1253 wrote: post #58

It's silly to think we're unable to change. Nearly all of the CO2 emissions were done in just a generation. Post-world war 2 industrialization, automation and globalization caused the vast majority of CO2. There are still people alive today who lived through WO2. Why are we talking like this is an insurmountable problem, that the momentum is just too big? It literally took /one/ average human life span to get where w…

>It's silly to think we're unable to change. Nearly all of the CO2 emissions were done in just a generation.

We are unable to change. You're talking about change for the worse there (in environmental terms), not change for the better.

Show me one instance in history where a human society avoided disaster. It hasn't happened. Every human society has peaked at some point, and then collapsed. Ancient Rome didn't go from controlling most of Europe and northern Africa to being a stable power among many; it collapsed entirely. Other earlier Middle Eastern societies didn't even fare that well; all that's left of them is a few ruins at best.

Humans are pretty good at going from nothing and building up a society in a short time, but they aren't any good at dealing with problems that arise in that society over time, especially if they're compounded by environmental problems. So human societies are always "upwards or bust". What makes you think it'll be different this time?

As for all your ideas, ask yourself this: will the voting population vote for candidates who tell them they're going to enact these policies?

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#247

Post by kafkaesq »

anigbrowl wrote: post #200
kafkaesq wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to scare people into behavior does not work very well. What works is "magic science." Are these the only two options? What about education, radical changes in awareness (and self-awareness), a move toward genuine sense of responsibility toward others as well as to the commons -- is all of that, off the table? And what if "magic science" fails us this time? Or is that "unthinkable"?

Education takes a generation or two to work even for simple things, and what you're asking for is deep and fundamental. Surely you have noticed by now that a good quarter of the US population views all forms of public education with hostility. Think also how long it has taken for obviously sensible ideas to catch on, and then consider the much greater difficulty of inculcating abstract moral and political concepts. R…

If you really want an outbreak of radical self-awareness, cross your fingers, hire every young organic chemist you can find, and start producing industrial quantities of LSD.

But that brings us back to "magic science".

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#248

Post by sctb »

joloka wrote: post #234
cbennett wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, fair enough. To be honest I also at times thought the author's alarmism went a bit far and could have scared off serious readers, but as a general principle I still don't think its valid to critique someone on a basis that is non-existent: e.g., the author at no point explicitly endorsed any of the concepts or ideas you mentioned in the GP comment.

I don't really care, I get paid by the Kochs to bash anything related to global warming. Going back to make a new account now, lol. The best part about this job is I can do it from the beach.

Sarcastic or not, we ban accounts that are created just to further an ideological agenda on Hacker News, which is an abuse of the site.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#249

Post by pyrale »

rhapsodic wrote: post #232
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the clear implication from what you wrote - did you not write it to dismiss the likelihood of global warming being caused by humans, and severe?

> That's the clear implication from what you wrote It is absolutely NOT the clear implication from what I wrote. But while we're on the subject, do you have any theories as to why the people who wring their hands about the dire emergency that AGW supposedly is, never seem to call out rich, left-wing celebrities or rich left-wing tech moguls for their planet-destroying lifestyles?

I can easily answer that question: some do, but you don't listen to them. Some don't because they understood you don't care about them doing so.

You're not interested in why they do or don't do it, in fact. You're merely interested in making a whataboutist point.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#250

Post by gorkonsine »

Bartweiss wrote: post #177
gorkonsine wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is CO2 a problem in breathable air? To humans, it's a harmless and inert gas, just like nitrogen. The real problem is too little O2, which humans require for respiration. Obviously, too much CO2 could displace O2 and reduce O2 levels, but it's not the CO2 that's an actual problem (i.e., if the CO2 displaced only N2, and O2 levels stayed the same, you wouldn't have a problem). So having a CO2 scrubber doesn't seem…

This relies on several common misconceptions. Earth's atmosphere is only about 0.03% carbon dioxide. CO2 levels high enough to cause catastrophic global warming still wouldn't displace enough oxygen to matter to humans - it would be a smaller change than a few thousand feet of elevation, which is entirely safe. The second issue: CO2 is not inert in the human body. It's not used for any crucial reactions, but it's mor…

Very informative, thanks.
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