21–30 of 183 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Climate change will create the first trillionaire. Is that a good thing?
everything described above is a good thing. Why do you care that someone will become insanely rich by improving lives for millions?
From what I gather, pressure from the establishment has systematically caused scientists to lowball impact estimates and ignore second (and higher) order effects. Meanwhile the complexity and far reach of impact is beyond anything we can model.
Consider how all the experts were surprised in the 2008 economic crisis. That was just an economic crisis, primarily involving things we can easily count (dollars) on a very small timescale (years).
Now we are talking about many interlocking systems we cannot model well, on a timescale we cannot fathom. How good could those estimates ever be? Maybe +/- 6 orders of magnitude.
I just want to remind everyone that there are solutions to climate change. We know how to produce clean energy and sequester CO2. The current free market does not make those solutions profitable for investors, though, and we will have to change that.
Solving climate change can be as simple as getting a carbon price adopted. It needs to ramp up over time, allow a secondary market for offsets, and create a cross-border network effect (e.g. carbon free trade zone), but it can actually be that simple.
A "carbon tax" may be infeasible given current political norms, but a revenue neutral "carbon dividend" would have the same effect while being more progressive.
So, if you are curious what you can do to solve climate change, consider contacting your representative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Climate change will create the first trillionaire. Is that a good thing?
Why are you on Hacker News if you don't think successfully solving enormous problems merits enormous payoff? Like, this is the YCombinator message board. It's about venture capital and discussion for middling-to-wildly-ambitious startups. I don't think you are wrong for asking the question, but this isn't really the place to question whether investment and entrepreneurism is an efficient system. There's a lot of inte…
Also, go pound sand. My comment has value, even if you don't see it.
"Yeah, billions are gonna die, but what really matters is my house prices are gonna go down."
It's going to happen faster than we've been told. I expect in 10 years global panic will set in.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EEwH4nTUcAE-Q7e.jpg
https://apnews.com/afs:Content:5755221200
> AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The Time cover labeled in social posts as coming from 1977 is actually a cover from 2007, with the image altered to change the title from “The Global Warming Survival Guide” to “How to Survive the Coming Ice Age,” Time magazine archives show.
It's going to happen faster than we've been told. I expect in 10 years global panic will set in.
Climate change will create the first trillionaire. Find every machine that eats fossil fuels and electrify it. Find every crop that requires stable land and predictable weather and farm it in a shipping container. Find every underlying infrastructure that requires decades to pay off and decentralize it. Instead of water line pipes, pull water out of the air. Instead of fiber optic cables make LEO satellites. Instead…
Why do you keep copy and pasting the same post? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21324768 > Find every machine that eats fossil fuels and electrify it. As I replied last time... you’re starting a free lunch fallacy, and it isn’t getting much better from there. Every “replacement” tech you list has massive downsides - replace fiber with inescapable high latency satellites, much higher cost, a crazy carbon footprin…
Appreciate your thoughts on this! You make a great point about LED bulbs and their landfill potential.
You're totally right about the fixed costs of LEDs. Today they're very complex from a manufacturing and materials standpoint, and can create much more trouble at a landfill than old glass and wire bulbs. That's a huge opportunity for improvement.
Ultimately as a civilization we have to find solutions with the lowest fixed and variable costs. The variable cost of glass and wire bulbs is high. You're heating a wire and generating tons of lost heat. LEDs beat the pants of glass and wire bulbs in terms of efficiency. So we have to improve that up front manufacturing and landfill potential of LEDs.
(disclaimer: I work in a Climate&Energy research group) I just want to remind everyone that there are solutions to climate change. We know how to produce clean energy and sequester CO2. The current free market does not make those solutions profitable for investors, though, and we will have to change that. Solving climate change can be as simple as getting a carbon price adopted. It needs to ramp up over time, allow a…
It seems that some of what already happened, like melting of icebergs, is not easy to be revert.