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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?

#501

Post by jaakl »

adrianN wrote: post #498
monosphere wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a political problem. And one solution is to build nuclear power plants. We need a few thousands of these worldwide to get around 70 % of energy production from fission, then solar, wind and hydro can cover the rest. I really don't understand why we're not doing this. 25 % of emissions are from electricity [1], and 21 % from industry. Industy would quickly start using more electricity once it became cheap. T…

I'm also in favor of nuclear power, but you have to admit that there are valid concerns. Nuclear waste is unsolved as long as we don't build breeder reactors. Uranium supplies aren't limitless either. Without breeders we'd run out quickly. Thorium is unproven tech. Safety is a concern, both engineering (do you really trust for-profit companies not to skimp on safety?) and proliferation of nuclear materials (how many…

Yep, unfortunately nuclear power is about 2x more expensive than e.g. gas, and more expensive than even renewables. The solution here would be to make CO2 expensive enough.

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

#502

Post by jaakl »

adrianN wrote: post #499
alexozer wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a political problem if you make it one. Better politics requires less technological innovation, and better technology requires less political innovation. The political barrier suddenly becomes much less intimidating if an extremely efficient way to such CO2 out of the atmosphere manually was found tomorrow.

Thermodynamics kind of forbids efficient ways to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. Unburning coal takes more energy than you got from burning it.

Source? Carbon capture and storage (CCS) seems to be a thing for sure.

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

#503

Post by jaakl »

jjeaff wrote: post #168
buro9 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today. The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you. If we care about the…

Humans are the ultimate adapters. Heck, we can survive in the vacuum of space, the highest peaks and some of the lowest parts of the ocean. We live in deserts and rain forests and tundra and remote islands. Humans will survive. They will adapt. It may not be in the same numbers and lifestyle as today, but the human race will likely be here for a very long time.

Humans have survived fine these extremes only because there is normal ecosystem outside from it. Now imagine that after climate collapse the vacuum of space, top of the peak or bottom of the ocean is the only environment we have. You don't even have a single remote island with reasonable nature. No, humans will not survive it for long.

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

#504

Post by candiodari »

PeterisP wrote: post #385
hliyan wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fundamentally it is a political problem" -- Agreed. What if the whole problem is that of "growth"? Here's one possible chain of thought. I don't fully subscribe to this, so please feel free to poke holes in it: 1. The biggest polluters tend to be commercial enterprises 2. They are aware of the environmental impact of their actions, but are reluctant to stop 3. They are staffed by (mostly) normal human beings, but th…

No, it doesn't work out that way. First, in order to determine what people will do, the relevant word is not "need" but "want". #6 is that stockholders want growth of return on their investments (because, hey, extra money is good for them). And they'll want that growth to be as big as possible, no matter what the inflation is; so stopping inflation won't remove the pressure for growth. On the other hand, if you want…

Nope stockholders need return on investment. Sorry. You can't skip that.

The problem if you kill this is that it breaks the asset allocation "algorithm" that is capitalism. If we don't have return on investment why wouldn't we spend all our money on, say, gold toilet seats ?

Or to put it a bit glib: Why do we need factories to "feed starving children" more than we need gold toilet seats ? Return on investment.

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

#505

Post by dotancohen »

growlist wrote: post #146
jsingleton wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well put. We have the tools to fix this problem, we just need the will. I wrote a lot more on this recently, with ideas that people on here can use to help influence better outcomes: https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-t... It's a shame that the big technology companies aren't using their influence and reach to help.

I don't think it's the big technology companies - I doubt there's any large corporation the shuttering of which would not benefit the environment. I'd like to see more measures such as making a factory take its intake water downstream of where it discharges its waste water - you can bet that waste water will be clean. Otherwise we are reliant on the supposed goodwill of CEOs, which has manifestly failed to deliver th…

> I doubt there's any large corporation the shuttering of which would not benefit the environment.

Tesla.

Tesla has done more tangible work towards removing carbon from the atmosphere than probably any other entity in history.

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

#506

Post by poloolop »

There is no single silver bullet. One mechanism which can have lasting impact is applying William McDonough's "Cradle-to-Cradle" philosophy to large sectors. Apple seems to be trying to do that. It needs better support and awareness from consumers, to reward the corporations who deliver on these parameters.

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

#507

Post by [deleted] »

ed_balls wrote: post #485
ben_w wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, if we have clean energy, are we going to shut down fossil fuel plants that have already been built? That depends entirely on how cheap the alternatives are. Fossil fuel mining is not zero cost in itself, so there is a minimum price it can’t go below. Indeed, quite a lot of coal plants are being shut down — they can’t compete as the fuel itself is too expensive. This is not universal as not all coal is the sa…

10$ for Saudis, 25$ for shell, 50$ from the Artic sea.

[deleted]

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

#508

Post by ben_w »

ed_balls wrote: post #485
ben_w wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, if we have clean energy, are we going to shut down fossil fuel plants that have already been built? That depends entirely on how cheap the alternatives are. Fossil fuel mining is not zero cost in itself, so there is a minimum price it can’t go below. Indeed, quite a lot of coal plants are being shut down — they can’t compete as the fuel itself is too expensive. This is not universal as not all coal is the sa…

10$ for Saudis, 25$ for shell, 50$ from the Artic sea.

Per what, barrel of oil?

If that’s what you’re quoting (I’ve not seen any recent attempts to calculate the costs of oil extraction), each barrel has ~1.7 MWh of energy. By way of comparison, PV solar records are around $0.02/kWh = $34/BOE.

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

#509

Post by m1573rp34130dy »

currency should be somthing physically valuable, barrels of oil, metal ingots, first born, atmospheric oxygen etc.

major educational overhaul that amounts to sedition is required, peoples ideals and aspirations must be re-tooled...

civilization as a global whole must profoundly change...

this seems to point at pockyclypse far and wide, with the subsequent social reordering... what sort of mythos needs to be promulgated in hopes of preventing a surviving culture from being so distracted and tunnel sighted as to screw it up all over again?

the tesla tunnelings and others must continue, we wont make an easy transition and will have to rely on subterranean refuge. the tesla tunnels [et.al.] are not for today or tomorrow only, as they will persist into the future millenia...

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

#510

Post by jsingleton »

Chris_Jay wrote: post #255
jsingleton wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depressingly pragmatic. While building resilience is certainly worthwhile, we can still fix this and should try. I think individual actions can add up, particularly when we use the magnifying power of tech. I wrote a lot on this recently and I can't fit it all in a comment so I'll just link to it. https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-t... It boils down to a three step process: - Understand - Org…

When you say 'fix' do you mean 'prevent a two-degree shift' or 'transition to an zero-net-emissions economy'? Or do you mean we can avoid some survivable threshold higher than two degrees? I agree that useful action is possible and important, but I'm starting to feel that our last chance to avoid catastrophic climate change was sometime last decade or the one before.

I mean both, first 'prevent a two-degree shift' then 'transition to an zero-net-emissions economy' and finally even negative emissions. This was almost solved in the 1980s and wasn't but that's a sunk-cost fallacy. The chips are down and we are where we are, so let's roll forward and get this solved.
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