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Ask HN: IT jobs fighting against climate catastrophe?
81–90 of 101 posts
Re: Ask HN: IT jobs fighting against climate catastrophe?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Small reactors, they remove the main problem with nuclear power: huge reactors that no western country knows how to build any more. The largest projects we can build today are the size of a large office building. Anything bigger will be over budget and time.
What about safety and nuclear waste?
While I am also concerned about safety (there’s always something that can go wrong, and the energy density and the conversion factor from energy to risk are both very hazardous here), the waste is a surprisingly small issue: The actual quantity of material, thanks to the energy density of the fuel, is tiny and easily managed.
Re: Ask HN: IT jobs fighting against climate catastrophe?
#83I spent a few years working for a small environmental advocacy group in small-town USA. One thing you could do is branch out your skills and learn GIS, then offer that to small groups who are doing environmental advocacy. These groups are crazy desperate for more people who know how to use GIS software, because there are needs for good mapping in almost every single aspect of the work they do. The issue is that anyon…
Do you know where those org put their job offers or accept remote worker? I found that most org with gis needs or consultancy gis companies tends to be super small in size and scale making it hard for an outsider to be considered as a potential applicant. I am on the other side of the coin, 3y working with GIS and remote sensing in agriculture, environment and public health. I am having a hard time finding a job to stay in the field (because searching in another country with a different language).
Re: Ask HN: IT jobs fighting against climate catastrophe?
#84I spent a few years working for a small environmental advocacy group in small-town USA. One thing you could do is branch out your skills and learn GIS, then offer that to small groups who are doing environmental advocacy. These groups are crazy desperate for more people who know how to use GIS software, because there are needs for good mapping in almost every single aspect of the work they do. The issue is that anyon…
Do you know where those org put their job offers or accept remote worker? I found that most org with gis needs or consultancy gis companies tends to be super small in size and scale making it hard for an outsider to be considered as a potential applicant. I am on the other side of the coin, 3y working with GIS and remote sensing in agriculture, environment and public health. I am having a hard time finding a job to s…
Public Lab might be able to use you. Or move to New Orleans and throw a brick.
Re: Ask HN: IT jobs fighting against climate catastrophe?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue the opposite, that its mainly a technical problem that has been coopted by a political movement. The technical problem should be (roughly), how can we continue to enjoy our lives and the standard of living we have achieved, and continue to bring more of the world to that level, in a way that is sustainable long term. There are lots of promising routes to making this happen, and we have already seen lots…
You know what will drastically reduce your standard of living? Climate change. Sure, it would be lovely to find a solution that would require no sacrifice from anyone. That is what everyone wants. It doesn't exist. If it did, do you think people have just been ignoring it? When it is exactly what everyone wants? No. Sacrifice is required, to avoid an even greater sacrifice in the future. And it is time for you to ste…
> It doesn't exist.
This has been decided? By who? When? Can you prove this?
Re: Ask HN: IT jobs fighting against climate catastrophe?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the best summary of why we're so well headed to a catastrophe. It seems that be definition, you won't accept any reduction of your standard of living. What if there's no way around it? Your standard of living relies on exploiting amounts of energy equivalent to several hundred slaves per person. That amount of energy can't be found in renewable sources only. How much of a slave master am I? https://jancovici.…
The arrogance of software engineers to believe that a few joules saved would make a difference. Humanity can spread to the stars and we still won't make a significant dent in the overall entropy changes in the universe even after billions of years. Energy consumption is a false herring for moral superiority and control. Replace the traditional Church with environmental activists and you have your modern climate chang…
Energy consumption as it relates to the generation of latent heat at the planet surface is not a red herring though.
Re: Ask HN: IT jobs fighting against climate catastrophe?
#87I spent a few years working for a small environmental advocacy group in small-town USA. One thing you could do is branch out your skills and learn GIS, then offer that to small groups who are doing environmental advocacy. These groups are crazy desperate for more people who know how to use GIS software, because there are needs for good mapping in almost every single aspect of the work they do. The issue is that anyon…
Do you know where those org put their job offers or accept remote worker? I found that most org with gis needs or consultancy gis companies tends to be super small in size and scale making it hard for an outsider to be considered as a potential applicant. I am on the other side of the coin, 3y working with GIS and remote sensing in agriculture, environment and public health. I am having a hard time finding a job to s…
Based on my experience, full-time positions just specializing in GIS are probably extremely rare for this type of organization - hence the desperate need for someone who is good at it. Nobody in those places has time to learn/maintain skills in something like that.
A small-to-medium sized nonprofit does not have the time/money resources to hire very many specialists at all - everyone is wearing multiple hats and learning to do things on the fly that they have never done before. As an example, in my role within the span of 2-3 weeks I went from graphic design invitations/menu for $250-a-plate dinner party, to literally running food and filling drinks at that same party while also taking pictures for social media and washing silverware for the chef, to patching together a transition to a new donation payment platform, then the next week I was designing a social media marketing campaign. It's a constant "all-hands-on-deck" at all times, and nobody has time to specialize in anything.
In the case of GIS needs, an organization like this might rely on an "advocate" (whose main job is to lobby elected officials) to do some of this work because they did one project with it in one class of their Public Administration grad program. In my experience, even our semi-retired secretary who did mostly bookkeeping was "punching above her weight" in job responsibilities.
That's why I suggested it as mostly a volunteer-type gig if one is truly passionate about using tech skills to help the environmental movement. If you want to work for one of those places you need to be more of a generalist, and accept that your passion of GIS might involve doing what should be a full-time job in 25% of your time at work.
Re: Ask HN: IT jobs fighting against climate catastrophe?
#88VR - With good enough virtual reality everything in the world would just become a poor substitute. A high quality VR enabled world would see the end to most transport and production of commercial goods.
Re: Ask HN: IT jobs fighting against climate catastrophe?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide more explanation?
It's not first time the experts make mistakes in their catastrophic predictions: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/50-years-of-failed-doomsday-e... And let's not forget our dear Al-Gore saying the ice on the artic would be vanished by 2014 :)
Looks like Gore didn’t quite understand what he thought he was quoting when he said that: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/12/al_gore_trip...
Re: Ask HN: IT jobs fighting against climate catastrophe?
#90To add to the advice that it's a political problem - you should think of ways of using your tech skills to provide leverage to campaigners. Build a proof of concept and approach NGOs and campaign organisations to see if they would sponsor you. There may also be PR firms with ethical agendas (if that's not a contradiction). Some ideas off the top of my head - visualisation tools (mapping large offenders and their carb…
An NGO that can afford to pay “software engineer” salaries is probably not doing as much good in the world as they claim. There’s no money in meaningfully addressing the climate crisis — only in tinkering around the edges and pretending.