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Ask HN: How can I, a programmer, help with the fight against climate change?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I, a programmer, help with the fight against climate change?

#41

Post by jollybean »

tuatoru wrote: post #35
deepnotderp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Do you really truly believe that there’s going to be a magic climate change solution that allows the developed world to continue living the way it has?” Yes, it’s called nuclear power

I literally laughed out loud. Not going to happen. We need solutions rolled out at global scale by 2030. Nuclear power projects don't have a good track record for speed. We need solutions that no-one is going to object to and for which the whole supply chain is already huge. Nuclear's cooling water demand alone makes it vulnerable to protest. I'm hoping that Form's iron-air grid-scale battery is manufacturable, scala…

You must be young? You do remember when France is 85% Nuclear and they built out their entire national infrastructure very quickly. Or as part of 'cultural memory'? I'm too young, but I remember people talking about it.

We could literally build those identical, 1960's style designs if we absolutely had to.

Of course, we'd build something a little more modern, even just a little more modern Canadian CANDU reactors would work.

We take forever to build them for organizational reasons, not because there's something that's inherently difficult that takes 30 years to do.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

Re: Ask HN: How can I, a programmer, help with the fight against climate change?

#43

Post by ecotable »

girishso wrote: post #36

Edit: Redacted. See the comment by ecotable bellow -- Use more efficient tools or technical stacks where possible. I was able to bring down CI runtime from about 12 minutes to about 3 minutes, with some not-very-difficult changes in the codebase. Considering CI is run tens of times everyday, and the codebase is compiled hundreds of times on dev machines each day, I like to think I am contributing to clean air. This m…

"Have no illusions. To achieve our goal of getting off fossil fuels, these reductions in demand and increases in supply must be big. Don’t be distracted by the myth that “every little helps.” If everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little. We must do a lot. What’s required are big changes in demand and in supply."

https://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_114.shtml

Re: Ask HN: How can I, a programmer, help with the fight against climate change?

#44

Post by [deleted] »

dgellow wrote: post #31
neolog wrote: post #23

Don't read HN on this topic. Read what actual climate experts have to say. Look at their academic and public-facing statements on the subject. Climatologists, climate economists, energy and agriculture experts. Start with reading. For example http://www.withouthotair.com/

The OP is asking how to use their skills to support the cause. What do academics and public statements have to do with this?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How can I, a programmer, help with the fight against climate change?

#45

Post by neolog »

dgellow wrote: post #31
neolog wrote: post #23

Don't read HN on this topic. Read what actual climate experts have to say. Look at their academic and public-facing statements on the subject. Climatologists, climate economists, energy and agriculture experts. Start with reading. For example http://www.withouthotair.com/

The OP is asking how to use their skills to support the cause. What do academics and public statements have to do with this?

The experts on this topic are better able to answer OP's question than HN is. They publish documents that OP can read to learn about what is an effective approach and what is not.

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/balsillie/

https://www.withouthotair.com/

Re: Ask HN: How can I, a programmer, help with the fight against climate change?

#46

Post by tuatoru »

Here's what you're up against, from a piece in the Grauniad UK:-

"The world will soon face “catastrophe” from climate breakdown if urgent action is not taken, the British president of vital UN climate talks has warned.

"Alok Sharma, the UK minister in charge of the Cop26 talks to be held in Glasgow this November, told the Observer that the consequences of failure would be “catastrophic”: “I don’t think there’s any other word for it. You’re seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade the hottest decade on record.”

"But Sharma also insisted the UK could carry on with fossil-fuel projects, in the face of mounting criticism of plans to license new oil and gas fields."[1]

Not the kind of thought you were wanting. Sorry about that.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/07/were-on-...

Re: Ask HN: How can I, a programmer, help with the fight against climate change?

#48

Post by fithisux »

josephcsible wrote: post #5

You can reduce the electricity that computers need by pushing back against the trend to use the bloated resource-hog that is Electron for every new desktop app, and writing actual native apps instead.

Ha Ha Ha !!!

Very true. Develop on a PIII with 512MB sdram and release if the software is usable.

It is true that "native" languages are slowly getting scripting characteristics. So maybe the future is "native" again (with scripting used for very specific reasons).

Re: Ask HN: How can I, a programmer, help with the fight against climate change?

#49

Post by tuatoru »

jollybean wrote: post #41
tuatoru wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally laughed out loud. Not going to happen. We need solutions rolled out at global scale by 2030. Nuclear power projects don't have a good track record for speed. We need solutions that no-one is going to object to and for which the whole supply chain is already huge. Nuclear's cooling water demand alone makes it vulnerable to protest. I'm hoping that Form's iron-air grid-scale battery is manufacturable, scala…

You must be young? You do remember when France is 85% Nuclear and they built out their entire national infrastructure very quickly. Or as part of 'cultural memory'? I'm too young, but I remember people talking about it. We could literally build those identical, 1960's style designs if we absolutely had to. Of course, we'd build something a little more modern, even just a little more modern Canadian CANDU reactors wou…

> You must be young?

I wish.

> You do remember when France is 85% Nuclear and they built out their entire national infrastructure very quickly.

No, I don't remember it; I was a long way away and young. I still don't speak French.

Yes, it's a bit sad that we can no longer do what a bunch of French bureaucrats with their 30-hour work weeks and 8-week vacances could do in the 1970s--even when we're desperate.

Re: Ask HN: How can I, a programmer, help with the fight against climate change?

#50

Post by wnkrshm »

jollybean wrote: post #40
paulcole wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either we change how we live or we’re fucked. And from what I’ve seen, people don’t mind being fucked tomorrow as long as they’re OK today. Even better if they can be OK-ish tomorrow as long as somebody else gets fucked worse. Do you really truly believe that there’s going to be a magic climate change solution that allows the developed world to continue living the way it has?

There is a 'magic climate change solution' it's called 'Nuclear Energy'. We can cleanly provide for our energy needs for the next 10000 years no problem. It just requires conscientious and organized behaviour on our part. Obviously there are questions as to how well, as a human race, we are organized ... but we can 100% do it, right now. We just have to get a long and act responsibly.

We could do a lot of things right now, we could end war forever, we could feed every person on Earth, we could have medical treatment for everyone... why isn't it happening? We are not fighting a technical problem here.
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