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What can a technologist do about climate change?

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Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#141

Post by flopto »

Jemaclus wrote: post #57

I've asked this question a few times but haven't really gotten a satisfactory answer. There are a lot of what I might call "epic problems" out there. Malaria, homelessness, HIV, refugees, war, climate change, income inequality, gender inequality, hate crimes. I don't know anything about creating vaccines or cures for malaria or HIV. I don't have a degree in social work or behavior science. I don't have any experience…

This is a fantastic question, and have been asking myself for a while. It turns out that there a quite a few technology projects that are tackling exactly these problems, addressing these issues technologically is an active area of research, and there are a number of companies with jobs that focus directly on developing this sort of technology.

One of my favorite projects is Rainforest Connection [1]: to help prevent illegal logging, they put recycled phones with solar panels in the tops of trees in rainforests, and then using some simple sound processing they listen for chainsaws and text the local villagers if they pick up on anything. The villagers then go out and stop the loggers.

For some other examples, check out PartoPen [2], and Projecting Health [3].

Projects like these are the subject of the field of ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development). Much of the research here focuses on health and education in developing regions, but many projects go outside of that. For a look at some of the recent research here, check out the latest ICTD conference [4]. There are ICTD graduate programs at maybe ten universities.

Outside of academia, these sorts of projects are being tackled by Microsoft Research India [5], the teams in Google that used to be Google.org [6], IBM Watson [7], Palantir's philanthropy engineering [8], and various smaller companies like [9], [10], and [11].

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that climate modelling as chaosphere2112 mentioned is another way to work directly on global-level climate issues; most of the things I'm pointing to are local.

[1] https://rfcx.org/

[2] http://www.partopen.com/

[3] http://blog.path.org/2014/09/projecting-health-video-india/

[4] http://ictd2015.org/papers-notes/

[5] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/tem/

[6] https://www.google.org/

[7] http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_group_pubs....

[8] https://www.palantir.com/philanthropy-engineering/

[9] http://www.dimagi.com/

[10] https://www.commcarehq.org/home/

[11] http://www.dekaresearch.com/water.shtml

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#142

Post by DennisP »

danieltillett wrote: post #123
DennisP wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less than the concrete for an equivalent amount of wind power. Neither is all that significant compared to fossil fuels.

It is not just the the total mass of concrete needed, it is the technical requirements and the difficulty of building the nuclear structures that uses massive amounts of carbon derived energy.

I'd like to see specific numbers on how that difficulty translates into carbon emissions.

Estimates I've seen that showed large CO2 emissions from nuclear were wildly overblown. In one case, they assumed that nuclear power would lead to full-scale nuclear war and included the carbon impact of the war.

In any case, if the NRC would let companies start building molten salt reactors, we could have much simpler construction. For starters, they'd be at atmospheric pressure, eliminating the need for large steel-reinforced containment domes and high-pressure reactor vessels. We could mass-produce reactors in factories or shipyards.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#143

Post by danieltillett »

XorNot wrote: post #63
danieltillett wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is not really low carbon when you take into account the amount of concrete you need to build a modern reactor. Unless we have a major breakthrough in mining uranium or we actually manage to make breeder reactors safe and cost effective then nuclear is not really a viable option. Edit. I should have been more precise in my language. By low carbon I am meaning minimal carbon, not just lower carbon. Natural gas…

In the time honoured tradition of shooting ourselves in the foot by making better the enemy of best? Neither concrete, nor uranium mining have to burn fossil fuels (and CO2 sequesting concrete is a real thing). They are decoupled from their fuel source, but the lack of incentives to improve that situation at present (due to the near entirety of electrical generation being fossil fuels) is the bigger problem.

Making cement by its nature releases a large amount of CO2 and accounts for 5% of total emissions [1]. I do agree that we are not really creating the right incentives to improve things.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_conc...

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#144

Post by brenschluss »

jerf wrote: post #67
Jemaclus wrote: post #57

I've asked this question a few times but haven't really gotten a satisfactory answer. There are a lot of what I might call "epic problems" out there. Malaria, homelessness, HIV, refugees, war, climate change, income inequality, gender inequality, hate crimes. I don't know anything about creating vaccines or cures for malaria or HIV. I don't have a degree in social work or behavior science. I don't have any experience…

There is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with making "lots" of money in a conventional manner, and donating it to an effective charity taking on the target task. In fact, in the spirit of the Kantian imperative, if everybody actually dropped their "merely productive" jobs and then tried to "directly solve poverty", we'd have just made the poverty problem much, much worse! You may want to Google the term "effecti…

There's quite a bit wrong with this model - most of all, it starts from the assumption that the lack of capital is the main limiting factor. World hunger is not a resource problem, it is a distribution and ideology problem.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#145

Post by underbluewaters »

jerf wrote: post #67
Jemaclus wrote: post #57

I've asked this question a few times but haven't really gotten a satisfactory answer. There are a lot of what I might call "epic problems" out there. Malaria, homelessness, HIV, refugees, war, climate change, income inequality, gender inequality, hate crimes. I don't know anything about creating vaccines or cures for malaria or HIV. I don't have a degree in social work or behavior science. I don't have any experience…

There is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with making "lots" of money in a conventional manner, and donating it to an effective charity taking on the target task. In fact, in the spirit of the Kantian imperative, if everybody actually dropped their "merely productive" jobs and then tried to "directly solve poverty", we'd have just made the poverty problem much, much worse! You may want to Google the term "effecti…

What you are describing is exactly what has been happening, and it is not working. We've abandoned the traditional role of government in solving these collective action problems in favor of empowering the rich to solve these problems through foundations and NGOs.

Government funding for research and conservation projects is at an all time low while those with the means fund their own pet projects. This is both inefficient (because these people aren't necessarily experts or choosing to fund the right experts) and it is undemocratic.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#146

Post by superuser2 »

merpnderp wrote: post #114
nostromo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is low-carbon, but it's not renewable. Earth has a set amount of uranium that is destroyed when creating energy. Currently we have about 200 years of uranium available for economical extraction. But if we tried to replace all coal with nuclear, we would be out within a few decades. Then we'd need to move to other non-renewable materials (thorium?) or start mining astroids. http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar…

Peak uranium is about as believable as peak oil. And given that uranium is a tiny fraction on the operating cost of a nuclear plant, it is viable at much higher prices. Which means much lower yield ores can be used for fuel. | And then there is thorium, which we have more of than we know what to do with. Then there's mining Uranium from the Ocean which puts a ceiling on the price of Uranium at 15x the current price.…

Why is peak oil not believable? There might be more of than we thought, but we're pretty sure there's not infinitely much. It has to happen eventually.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#147

Post by ommunist »

nostromo wrote: post #30
pc86 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to figure out why nuclear is lumped in with fossil fuels.

Nuclear is low-carbon, but it's not renewable. Earth has a set amount of uranium that is destroyed when creating energy. Currently we have about 200 years of uranium available for economical extraction. But if we tried to replace all coal with nuclear, we would be out within a few decades. Then we'd need to move to other non-renewable materials (thorium?) or start mining astroids. http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar…

This reminds me of Mendeleyev's concerns about major environmental problem of the XXth century city - horse poo. Megatons of horse poo. How could possibly we handle that? History proved that technology can save us from predicted environmental impact of horses made by one of the brightest minds of its time. Same thing with uranium depletion problem. In 100 years we probably shall have effective thorium reactors, thanks to Norway and China, solar power stations on the Moon and who knows what else. Just lets don't stop thinking and tinkering.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#148

Post by jkaunisv1 »

grenzbegriff wrote: post #115
Jemaclus wrote: post #57

I've asked this question a few times but haven't really gotten a satisfactory answer. There are a lot of what I might call "epic problems" out there. Malaria, homelessness, HIV, refugees, war, climate change, income inequality, gender inequality, hate crimes. I don't know anything about creating vaccines or cures for malaria or HIV. I don't have a degree in social work or behavior science. I don't have any experience…

I think about the same things and ask the same question. My current plan is to save most of my money so I can reach financial independence very early. I'm 25 now, I'll be financially independent by 27, meaning I'll have enough money invested to live indefinitely on interest/dividends. My total expenses/spending is $25k/year and I'm sure I can keep them there if I want to. Most people who start making a silicon valley…

By my quick math you'd need at least $500k to live off the interest. Are you investing in a plain way (ie. index fund or similar) and just have a really good salary? It sounds like you're banking upwards of $75k/year.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#149

Post by knieveltech »

jerf wrote: post #94
knieveltech wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there's quite a bit wrong with this approach, the most obvious being the inefficiency incurred by funneling money through several layers of middlemen.

"You may want to Google the term 'effective altruism'."

For values of "obvious" apparently.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#150

Post by ams6110 »

danieltillett wrote: post #123
DennisP wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less than the concrete for an equivalent amount of wind power. Neither is all that significant compared to fossil fuels.

It is not just the the total mass of concrete needed, it is the technical requirements and the difficulty of building the nuclear structures that uses massive amounts of carbon derived energy.

It is still a drop in the bucket compared to coal-powered generators running 24x7
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