121–130 of 210 posts
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Slot 143 Points 112 Comments 111 My first chunk of free time goes into making an automated bigotry-watcher for HN. This is the purest bullshit I have seen in a while. Had I checked HN half an hour late, I would have never caught this.
yeah it's concerning, is there a way we can alert a moderator/admin or something?
Please select "Hacker News" from "Concerning" drop down and submit your message.
Why is this entry already on page 2 of HN? Seems a bit fast given the popularity and the fact that it was posted 2 hours ago (also, compared to those that are present on p1) -- edit: we're now on page 3 just 30 minutes after my comment.
This subthread may very well be contributing to the submission sinking: one of the factors involved is the "overheated discussion detector", which, as I understand it, takes into account rate of comments. From the FAQ: > How are stories ranked? > The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in comment threads are ranked the same way. > Other factors affecting rank in…
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As an individual, you are powerless to control population growth. If you decide not to have kids, the world will get filled with the descendants of other people. The descendants of those other people will probably care less about what happens to the environment than your descendants would. Dealing with the issues of the future will require collective action. In order for that collective action to take place, people w…
You're still pretending like your kids or those other peoples' kids might get together and fix climate change. I'm saying it's too late for that. Having kids is just condemning them to live in a world ravaged by famine, war and drought. Maybe you're fine with that because you believe on some philosophical level that any life is preferable to never having lived at all, but that's not self-evident.
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Slot 143 Points 112 Comments 111 My first chunk of free time goes into making an automated bigotry-watcher for HN. This is the purest bullshit I have seen in a while. Had I checked HN half an hour late, I would have never caught this.
yeah it's concerning, is there a way we can alert a moderator/admin or something?
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1. Carbon Dioxide stores lots of energy 2. The sun provides lots of energy 3. Therefore, carbon dioxide is able to store lots of solar energy 4. We are releasing lots of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere 5. Therefore, the atmosphere's ability to store solar energy is increasing What part of this logic don't you understand or disagree with?
You seem to have this all figured out then, so let me ask, approximately what point beyond your retirement will all of this happen? And I say "beyond your retirement" because that is the time you will probably give me, a time you won't have to worry about anyone taking you to task on your faulty science.
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US emissions of CO2 have fallen much faster than Europe's. Europe likes to talk a lot but not to compromise. So while they could be fracking and displacing dirty energy sources, they instead use oil and coal where the US uses natural gas.
That's Foxnews-like nonsense. Here's some facts. A nice visualization of per-capita EU-US Co2 emissions over the last 20 years: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... The US has over double the per-capita emissions of the EU. The EU has a larger economy, by GDP. The US can do a lot more - particularly leadership.
Ouch. I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest of the time I have left. Should I even bother with my current career in tech, or would it be better to quit it and do something that could have even a slight impact now? These articles are great, but preaching to the choir. What should any of us do? I'm seriously and sincerely asking. Are there any suggestions, from a personal stand point i…
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1. Carbon Dioxide stores lots of energy 2. The sun provides lots of energy 3. Therefore, carbon dioxide is able to store lots of solar energy 4. We are releasing lots of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere 5. Therefore, the atmosphere's ability to store solar energy is increasing What part of this logic don't you understand or disagree with?
You seem to have this all figured out then, so let me ask, approximately what point beyond your retirement will all of this happen? And I say "beyond your retirement" because that is the time you will probably give me, a time you won't have to worry about anyone taking you to task on your faulty science.
That's the point of the article! Did you even read it?
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evangelize in high birthrate countries things like contraception and encourage education especially of women. The fewer people destroying virgin forests and becoming western style consumers the lesser the better for environmental health. An earth of 7.5 billion is more sustainable than an earth of 10 billion. 7.5 will live better lives than a world of 10, given sociopolitical realities.
I like the idea of helping with education and stuff, but why not instead help them develop clean energy? I’m just REALLY not a fan of the “can’t let the 3rd world have so many people and then develop to 1st world standards” thing. It may technically help the problem, but it feels like soft racism and proto-eugenicism, at least from the perspective of people living in those countries. It gives me the creeps, although…
Keeping people poor or would be a soft racism/proto-eugenicism, but reduce child mortality and empower women with contraception (as an option they can choose, not pushed coercive) are pretty unambiguously good. I mostly donate to the Against Malaria Foundation both as my anti-poverty charity and my pro-environment charity. They're rated well on effectiveness.
I haven't done much research into highly-effective charities that provide contraception or related educational materials, but https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/causes/women-charities has some that seem relevant. Women's rights in general is usually a pretty good proxy for both "let women not have babies when they don't want to" and "give women options for fulfilling lives other than just having babies".
Why isn't there a billion dollar reward to any person or company that comes up with a cost-effective way to capture carbon from the air and convert back to solid carbon? I'd love to understand the physics (or chemistry? maybe economy?) that prevents this from materialising.
The EU's ETS [1] is currently the biggest carbon market, regulating about 40% of EU emissions.
It does not grant rights to capturers that take CO2 out of the atmosphere - only to those that reduce the emissions at some plant or factory. Apparently this choice is partly because it's not clear how to make sure that the carbon sink is stable - that the CO2 won't get out again. [2]
Lets assume you could get emissions rights for removing CO2. Would this provide the incentive we want?
The current price for emissions rights is 15€ per 1000 tons of CO2 [3], so an operation to sequester all of the EU's emissions (3.4 * 10^9 t, 2014, [4]) would get a revenue of at most 50 million euro / year. Probably much less since the market would get flooded.
Why is this price so low? The ETS' cap could be too low. Also, the ETS does not really cap emissions at all. Only certain industries, like power or aluminium manufacturing need to present certificates [1b], hence the 40%. Also, industries which would be 'at risk' to leave the EU if they were forced to pay, get free certificates [5] - arguably these would pay the most for rights.
Overall the EU does seem to be doing something right though, since the overall emissions are going down [4]. But the ETS does not seem to internalize the carbon externality.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en
[1b] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/factsheet_ets_e...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Tradin...
[3] https://www.theice.com/products/197/EUA-Futures/data?marketI...
[4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...
[5] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/allowances/leakage_e...