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Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

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Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#361

Post by dubya123 »

doon123 wrote: post #127
raquo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as comfortable as you will be able get with global wars, refugees, food shortages, etc. going on. Governments and countries are not very stable under these conditions. Probably shouldn't expect your wealth to crisis proof your life in this scenario. Won't hurt but we'll all be much better off organizing to avoid this future.

>> Well, as comfortable as you will be able get with global wars, refugees, food shortages, etc. going on. I think the crisis will be contained to the poorest parts of the world. Especially the tropics. This area is going to be the first to bear the brunt of climate change related problems. I dont foresee Global wars happening. The politicians are too smart for that. They will try to contain the damage to the extant…

Mass Migration blows up your entire scenario.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#362

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #262
TeMPOraL wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because our technology doesn't magically appear out of nowhere. Even the simple DIY "lifehack" you can assemble from $5 worth of RadioShack parts has huge supply chains hidden behind it, staffed by hundreds of thousands of people. On top of that, all those supply chains are full of circular dependencies. A chip needs a fab. A fab needs computers. Computers need chips... and screws. Screws need metal and precision man…

That's a common trope in Science Fiction. But modern technology is different from the Iron Age. It uses vastly less energy for the same result; its honestly simpler in many regards than what came before. Sure there are dependencies, and some technologies will collapse and become unachievable for generations. But others are essentially free of dependencies - the germ theory of disease, the staff system, democracy, air…

Ideas get lost too. The way out of the dark ages was made by monasteries who saved libraries. It still took forever to recover.

Maybe we’ll have a rennasaince. Maybe we won’t; but Paper Books will be critical

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#363

Post by seiferteric »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #328
cletus wrote: post #11

So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity. One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of thi…

You don't have to turn the Earth into Venus. You just have to raise the Earth from 283 Kelvin to 285 Kelvin, and you'll get massive flooding and ice melt which technology won't be able to wave away. Look at hurricanes today, they are deadly, where is the tech saving us from them?

Cars, weather satellites etc... We can evacuate a hurricane, we can't evacuate the planet.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#364

Post by CodeCube »

antoineMoPa wrote: post #326
pauldjohnston wrote: post #221

Well, having done some research into this recently, the tech world has something it can do right now. Switch to sustainably powered Cloud and move to renewably powered/offset Data Centres. e.g. Google (100% carbon neutral), Azure (100% offset), AWS (Oregon, Montreal, Ireland, Frankfurt regions are 100% carbon neutral) Cloud/Data Centres emit around 2% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (bet you didn't know that). There is a…

I wonder what percentage of CO2 comes from programmers commuting to work.

Go remote! the planet, along with your family, sanity, and happiness will thank you!

Every working programmer today can stand up, walk to their boss' desk, and have the conversation about going remote, even if only part time (for now). If they say no, ask how you can work towards that in the future, and if they don't relent, find a different job (don't immediately quit, obviously; now you have leverage in knowing that you want another job, but don't need it quite yet). When doing your job search, the first question you should ask is, "is the position remote friendly?"

Let's change the industry's culture from the ground up.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#365

Post by crispinb »

The collapse of the dynamically stable climate on which agricultural civilisation is founded is vanishingly unlikely to be prevented at this stage - no-one has ever even outlined, let alone detailed, even one remotely plausible political route from business-as-usual to where we need to be. As others here note, it's fundamentally a problem of world politics, howevermuch a proportion of HN readership may wish to suck at the corner of their technological comfort blanket. As we have no meaningful world polity, it's unsolvable. Our civilisation will almost certainly descend into chaos & war as the early effects of climate collapse roll in this century. Look at the convulsions flowing from a tiny trickle of refugees into Europe in 2015-16. That was barely a taste of what's to come.

It's hardly surprising - nothing in H. Sapiens' constellation of seemingly unique traits (cognitive flexibility, sociality, cultural transmission through language etc) equips it to make collective decisions on a global scale. It's kind of telling that just as it's becoming most blindingly obvious that all our major challenges are planetary, there is a general retreat from commitment to global decision-making. We're not adequate to to the task. This isn't anyone's fault - it's just biology.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#366

Post by mahasvin »

dplavery92 wrote: post #359
mahasvin wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked a bit around the data, and I am very sceptical about humanity ability to produce enough CO2 for The Climate Change. Volcanic activity was, is, and will be the main contributor to the CO2 pool. Humanity is not the geological force, regretfully.

That's simply incorrect. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/volcano-carbon-emissions/ https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits... https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warmin... https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/06/how-... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcan...

Ah, Forbes always was an authoritative source on climate change. I am not in the mood for battling over the authors who are unable to consider 250 000 underwater volcanoes. You know, 250 000 underwater volcanoes cannot be wrong.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#367

Post by korantu »

Retric wrote: post #352
korantu wrote: post #341

The only solution to rapid reduction in co2 emissions that can be deployed right now at sufficient scale is nuclear. There are passively safe designs built right now. It can provide electricity, heat and desalination if lack of water is an issue. There is enough nuclear fuel in sea water to consider it an infinite source as far as humans are concerned [1]. Further, USA alone can be powered by its existing nuclear _wa…

Nuclear still costs far to much vs Wind and Solar. If all greenhouse gases came from electricity generation then doing the France model might work, but it's much better to cheaply go 95+% renewable and use the savings to cut down on transportation and home heating etc. PS: Grid scale solar is rapidly hitting 2 cents per kWh in sunny places. Nothing else is anywhere near competing with that.

If you factor in cost of storage required to provide continuous power, then you get way more expensive and less reliable. Now this problem is solved by, surprise, fossil fuels. [0]

Ofcourse solar is cheaper when it is sunny, provider might even need to pay consumer to get them to consume. [1]

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/15...

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/renewable-power-germany-nega...

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#368

Post by mikeash »

revel wrote: post #350
mikeash wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest 15 cargo ships emit more sulphuric dioxide than all the cars on the road combined. That is not a greenhouse gas, and actually has a cooling effect, although it’s not healthy locally.

So I looked into this more and you're right that it's sulphuric dioxide that I was thinking of. CO2 emissions from shipping are 800m tons per year and, if taken alone, would constitute the 6th heaviest source of carbon emissions in the world.

How are you dividing up other sources such that shipping would be the 6th heaviest source? At roughly 2% of total global emissions, it seems like you'd have to lump other sources together in a strange way to come up with that ranking.

For example, looking at: https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/

Taking shipping as a separate thing, it would rank 7th in the chart of total emissions and 6th in the chart of energy-related emissions, but only because those charts only contain 6 and 5 entries respectively.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#369

Post by jbattle »

unit91 wrote: post #353
wtmt wrote: post #336

Don't wait for others to do things or take decisions. That's going to be an uphill battle if you really want changes quicker. Start with yourself, and then push others (including friends, family, colleagues, corporations, politicians, etc.). A lot can be done if people take up changes on their own instead of waiting for politicians or corporations or "those other polluting countries" to "just do something" about it.…

> Have fewer children...think of yourself as committed to this cause...People will even try to discourage you...Stop looking at them or listening to them. This sounds a lot like a cult religion to me.

There's no way we're going to make a meaningful positive impact on the climate without doing things that make people uncomfortable. The sooner we start, the less dramatic that discomfort will be

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#370

Post by avmich »

mahasvin wrote: post #320
titzer wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine... TBH statements like these really grate on me. Yes, Earth will be fine in the same sense that you'd be fine if you surgically removed your arms, legs, eyeballs, ears, and tongue and then were fed intravenously and your waste disposed of for you. You might live a long life and have lots of nice dreams. The reality is that we are in early stages of kicking off a cascad…

I worked a bit around the data, and I am very sceptical about humanity ability to produce enough CO2 for The Climate Change. Volcanic activity was, is, and will be the main contributor to the CO2 pool. Humanity is not the geological force, regretfully.

This sources disagree:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warmin...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcan...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compare+human+emissions+volcanic+e...

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