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Ask HN: I'm just a programmer worried about climate change, how can I help?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm just a programmer worried about climate change, how can I help?

#92

Post by abainbridge »

glastra wrote: post #89
ppseafield wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's literally not enough land on the planet for everyone to eat free range beef. As for the plantations: if we all cut out livestock from our diets, there'd be 9x less of them. And what does "ideal" mean?

From your first sentence, I understand that feeding everyone in the planet is a priority. You also assert that, if we move to a plant-based diet, we would need 9x less plantations^. Do you believe those plantations will be abandoned? Or, rather, that they will be used to feed humans and thus lead to an overabundance of food and a 9x population growth? I believe that "ideal" is nowhere near a diet requiring supplement…

9x less plantations:

0.58 cows per hectare - http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/62085

274 kg meat on a cow - https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/junk/cow.html

10470 kJ of food energy per kilo of beef - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef

1000 days to rear a cow - https://www.withouthotair.com/c13/page_77.shtml

Therefore 0.58 * 274 * 10470 / 1000 = 607 kJ of cow, per day, per hectare.

In comparison, wheat yields 3120 kg per hectare per year - https://www.statista.com/statistics/237705/global-wheat-prod...

1368 kJ per kg - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat

Therefore 3120 * 1368 / 356 = 11989 kJ of wheat, per day, per hectare.

So, by my calculations, you need 19.75x more land to grow a kJ of beef than a kJ of wheat.

Re: Ask HN: I'm just a programmer worried about climate change, how can I help?

#94

Post by y3k »

Libbum wrote: post #38

What country do you live in? I work at a climate research institute and have connections all over. I could perhaps put you in contact with a local research team. Sadly, I'd say that a lot of current research tools are pretty shoddy when it comes to implementation. Not that they give incorrect results, more-so that there is no way to really interop systems with any ease. No standards, only a small culture of open sour…

Hi, sorry for being late.

At the moment I live in México / USA.

I would love to provide feedback to help standarize and design protocols.

Re: Ask HN: I'm just a programmer worried about climate change, how can I help?

#95

Post by y3k »

chjango_u wrote: post #84

We're a blockchain startup and while we're not directly solving global warming, we are pioneering the bleeding edge technology for building in economic incentives for applications like lowering carbon emissions, water waste, or fossil fuel usage. We believe that through the clever use of blockchains, we might create the incentives for a greener planet. If you're a go, rust, or JavaScript developer, we're hiring-- ten…

Thank you for the offer.

Sadly I do believe that the power consumption of blockchain / crypto technologies is, at this step, pretty bad compared to what they can solve.

Re: Ask HN: I'm just a programmer worried about climate change, how can I help?

#96

Post by y3k »

ishikawa wrote: post #52

Power companies have a great demand for software. By working with green companies you are helping the world get cleaner. By working with coal or gas-fired Power plants to manage, control and reduce their emissions, you are also helping the world. I have worked for the past 13 years doing that.

That sounds ideal.

Any suggestion about where to start looking at? Sadly in my current location neither goverment nor companies have too much interest on going green.

Re: Ask HN: I'm just a programmer worried about climate change, how can I help?

#97

Post by y3k »

duchenne wrote: post #42

Climate research relies heavily on simulations. You could probably work in a climate research institute to improve the modeling software. This kind of coding of also interesting from a technical point of view: very big computation, lot of data, parallelism. source: a climatologist friend.

I would love to do that. I'm probably not experienced enough to find a work on it though.

But it's something that I will research for sure.

Re: Ask HN: I'm just a programmer worried about climate change, how can I help?

#98

Post by y3k »

runjake wrote: post #79

Since nobody else said it: Write efficient code using efficient software running on efficient hardware in efficient data centers. It can really add up.

Already trying to do that.

However, I want to be more proactive against the climate change, got tired of just do my best to improve my emissions, I want to actually help to fix what we have done.

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