Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

apps.seattletimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 179 posts

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#51

Post by [deleted] »

masklinn wrote: post #15
mathattack wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It dwarfs all other problems -- Syria, terrorism, the NSA, class and economic disparity, all of them." I don't know enough about climate science to be fully informed about impact, but this I know... A true carbon tax would be of such enormous magnitude, that it would compare with issues like class disparity. * If the pessimists are true, the deaths involved from climate change will draw Syria plus 9/11 plus many oth…

If the pessimists are correct, death due to climate changes will be on the scale of world wars.

[deleted]

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#52

Post by nostromo »

lutusp wrote: post #43
revscat wrote: post #7

Like many who visit HN, I am an atheist. I am coming to believe, however, that the production of CO2 is the greatest sin, in the religious sense, that exists today. It dwarfs all other problems -- Syria, terrorism, the NSA, class and economic disparity, all of them. Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I am growing increasingly pessimistic that su…

> Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I have some bad news: * The problem isn't pollution and CO2 release, at last not directly. The problem is the number of people doing the polluting and CO2 releasing. * A solution would be to have a smaller worldwide birthrate. Easy to say. * But any solution to the above point is very likely to collide with e…

This stuck with me from Marvin Minsky's TED talk:

> Anyway, the question I think people should talk about -- and it's absolutely taboo -- is, how many people should there be? And I think it should be about 100 million or maybe 500 million. And then notice that a great many of these problems disappear. If you had 100 million people properly spread out, then if there's some garbage, you throw it away, preferably where you can't see it, and it will rot. Or you throw it into the ocean and some fish will benefit from it. The problem is, how many people should there be?

http://www.ted.com/talks/marvin_minsky_on_health_and_the_hum...

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#53

Post by moocowduckquack »

yk wrote: post #31
jallmann wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'd have to cover too much land with solar panels. What we need are more nuclear power plants, but no one will build them anymore.

You need something like half of the Sahara to produce the global primary energy consumption from solar panels alone. [1] ( Or the next few largest deserts combined.) So this is certainly not easy, but it is on the scale of doable. On the other hand, there are reasons why no one has ever tried to finance a nuclear power plant out of his own pockets, it is basically a bet on the interest rate of the next 30 years. ( An…

[1] 100 TW primary energy

An article by MIT claims 14TW - http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/energy-scale-part1-1024.h... - and I've seen figures from 12TW to 20TW bandied around and I tend to use 18TW when running the numbers, but I have never seen an estimate as high as 100TW. Where's that figure from?

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#54

Post by revscat »

lutusp wrote: post #43
revscat wrote: post #7

Like many who visit HN, I am an atheist. I am coming to believe, however, that the production of CO2 is the greatest sin, in the religious sense, that exists today. It dwarfs all other problems -- Syria, terrorism, the NSA, class and economic disparity, all of them. Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I am growing increasingly pessimistic that su…

> Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I have some bad news: * The problem isn't pollution and CO2 release, at last not directly. The problem is the number of people doing the polluting and CO2 releasing. * A solution would be to have a smaller worldwide birthrate. Easy to say. * But any solution to the above point is very likely to collide with e…

> I hate to break this to you, but the biggest obstacle to a human solution to this problem is ... humans. Or nature, if you prefer, in the guise of natural selection.

I'm not even sure that we are in disagreement. Reducing the birth rate would be one (admittedly important) prong in a multi-prong approach. But given current environmental realities, reducing the birthrate, even drastically, would not have the desired impact on current CO2 levels.

Also, given humanity's energetic sexuality I do not think such a goal is realistic in practice, at least not enough to prevent apocalypse, and certainly not in the time frame required.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#55

Post by lutusp »

revscat wrote: post #54
lutusp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I have some bad news: * The problem isn't pollution and CO2 release, at last not directly. The problem is the number of people doing the polluting and CO2 releasing. * A solution would be to have a smaller worldwide birthrate. Easy to say. * But any solution to the above point is very likely to collide with e…

> I hate to break this to you, but the biggest obstacle to a human solution to this problem is ... humans. Or nature, if you prefer, in the guise of natural selection. I'm not even sure that we are in disagreement. Reducing the birth rate would be one (admittedly important) prong in a multi-prong approach. But given current environmental realities, reducing the birthrate, even drastically, would not have the desired…

Sadly, all your points are true and germane. All I can add is that I speak to many people who try to argue that reducing CO2 emission is the problem, not the size of the population doing the emitting.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#56

Post by hooande »

revscat wrote: post #7

Like many who visit HN, I am an atheist. I am coming to believe, however, that the production of CO2 is the greatest sin, in the religious sense, that exists today. It dwarfs all other problems -- Syria, terrorism, the NSA, class and economic disparity, all of them. Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I am growing increasingly pessimistic that su…

It's very easy to underestimate the power of human ingenuity. The things we do routinely today would seem to be beyond magic to someone who lived 100 years ago. How do you even convey the concept of "automated car" to someone who doesn't know what a car is? How would you explain the job of a "director of social media strategy" to someone who lives in 1913?

My point is that the people of the 22nd century will probably be more alien to us than we are to people of the early 20th century. One innovation is all it takes to change paradigms, and those innovations are very difficult to see coming. Then something builds on top of that and something else on top of that, and next thing we know someone is getting filthy rich by removing carbon from the atmosphere using science fiction technology.

I believe that your pessimism is unfounded. Human beings have a long history of rising to a challenge. Even more so when there are fantastic sums of money to be made from a global economy. The safe bet is on technology and innovation, on unexpected ideas and discoveries that change the way we understand our problems. I'll admit that the environmental situation looks grim, but take heart in the fact that help is on the way.

And: HN has gotten so conspiracy crazy. For whatever Snowden did, he certainly changed the way that we view things in our corner of the internet. Privacy and liberty are genuinely important values and they should be fought for. But really, every thread? "the powers that be"? This too shall pass, I suppose.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#57

Post by revscat »

JonFish85 wrote: post #24
revscat wrote: post #7

Like many who visit HN, I am an atheist. I am coming to believe, however, that the production of CO2 is the greatest sin, in the religious sense, that exists today. It dwarfs all other problems -- Syria, terrorism, the NSA, class and economic disparity, all of them. Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I am growing increasingly pessimistic that su…

> I don't think humanity will survive into the 22nd century Well that's a dumb thing to say. Have you been going to barbecues with Harold Camping? It'll be a different place in 87 years, sure. But humanity will be doing just fine, unless some whackjob launches off some nuclear weapons.

I don't know who that is.

Insofar as humanity's long-term survival goes, though, no I do not think it is by any means a sure thing. The rate of CO2 emissions increases every year, parallel to the population. The "whackjobs" that are attacking are those who produce and profit from fossil fuels production and consumption. They already exist, and are not some far off, imaginary threat.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#58

Post by lutusp »

nostromo wrote: post #52
lutusp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I have some bad news: * The problem isn't pollution and CO2 release, at last not directly. The problem is the number of people doing the polluting and CO2 releasing. * A solution would be to have a smaller worldwide birthrate. Easy to say. * But any solution to the above point is very likely to collide with e…

This stuck with me from Marvin Minsky's TED talk: > Anyway, the question I think people should talk about -- and it's absolutely taboo -- is, how many people should there be? And I think it should be about 100 million or maybe 500 million. And then notice that a great many of these problems disappear. If you had 100 million people properly spread out, then if there's some garbage, you throw it away, preferably where…

> [Marvin Minsky:] "I think it [world population] should be about 100 million or maybe 500 million."

If only people were rational. But population doesn't follow rationality, it follows the Logistic function:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

The Logistic function's left-hand side looks as flat as it does because there are too few organisms to support a larger growth rate.

The Logistic function's right-hand side looks as flat as it does because there are too many starving organisms to support a larger growth rate.

Welcome to natural selection. :)

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#59

Post by Retric »

hooande wrote: post #56
revscat wrote: post #7

Like many who visit HN, I am an atheist. I am coming to believe, however, that the production of CO2 is the greatest sin, in the religious sense, that exists today. It dwarfs all other problems -- Syria, terrorism, the NSA, class and economic disparity, all of them. Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I am growing increasingly pessimistic that su…

It's very easy to underestimate the power of human ingenuity. The things we do routinely today would seem to be beyond magic to someone who lived 100 years ago. How do you even convey the concept of "automated car" to someone who doesn't know what a car is? How would you explain the job of a "director of social media strategy" to someone who lives in 1913? My point is that the people of the 22nd century will probably…

Horses are fairly automated when they knew where you where going. They also tended to avoid running into buildings so in some ways a car was a step backward.

Also, go back 4,000 years and say I am using secret knowledge to build a 4 man horseless carriage that's 5x as fast as a horse and does not need a driver that burns oil to run and they can picture something fairly close to what a automated car can do. People had no idea how animals worked inside when they domesticated them, that in no way prevented dogs from being useful.

Re: Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn

#60

Post by jessaustin »

vertr07 wrote: post #38
rickjames28 wrote: post #32

Like many who visit HN, I am an atheist. I am coming to believe, however, that the production of CO2 is the greatest sin, in the religious sense, that exists today Yes, global warming has become the religion of leftists.

I always find it funny when the religious claim that atheists are actually religious too and use that to dismiss them.

Laugh away, but I'm not religious at all, and the same bullshit that turned me away from religion also turns me away from atheism.
Post reply on HN