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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?

#211

Post by brandmeyer »

orangecat wrote: post #204
brandmeyer wrote: post #28

I have a controversial opinion on this topic: I don't think it is morally ethical to use inefficient languages in high duty-cycle applications. By "high duty-cycle applications" I specifically refer to environments which consistently consume the bulk of available CPU resources: big web servers, caching intermeddiate servers, etc. The common rationale is to trade off engineering time for CPU time. But that trade also…

You're going to need actual numbers for this to be a valid argument. Data centers use only 3 percent of global electricity production ( http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/12/17/under... ), and it seems unlikely that a noticeable portion of that is caused by CPU-intensive software that isn't already well-optimized.

This isn't world-changing by any means. Just as individuals can reduce our energy consumption with high-SEER HVAC systems, high-efficiency lighting, etc, I think that programmers as individuals can reduce energy consumption by using higher-efficiency computing languages.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#212

Post by Hytosys »

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…

> ...homelessness, refugees, war, climate change, income inequality

These are all directly caused by an economic system which optimizes for profits instead of people. I would also argue that the other problems you listed are perpetuated by said system. You are looking to solve a social problem using individual means. You cannot do that. Join local fights, help replace this broken system.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#213

Post by chaosphere2112 »

spenczar5 wrote: post #206
chaosphere2112 wrote: post #133

I work on climate software at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory[1]. My team works with big data and visualization. We support ACME[2] (the Department of Energy's climate modeling program), PCMDI[3] (a team that's been evaluating climate models since 1989), and a number of other projects and groups. If you are interested in what you can do for the climate, we need all the help we can get. Our code may not be the…

How comfortable are government software groups like this with remote workers?

The answer is "it depends". If you work for the lab, the answer is "not very" (I know of 2 or 3 full time remote workers, and they're all in the IT department and completely indispensable). If you form a contracting company that jumps through the pile of legal and bureaucratic nonsense in order to be appropriately incorporated, the answer is "we don't care where you work", though getting hired is a pain.

So, mostly, no. On the other hand, there are a number of national labs spread around the country (http://www.energy.gov/about-national-labs), and the rules may differ depending on the main kinds of work done at each of those facilities, I'm not entirely certain.

We do have a fairly liberal "work from home when you want" policy, and a formal work from home agreement can happen (a coworker works from home every monday).

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#214

Post by Mz »

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…

So, I am homeless. And a woman. And have taken a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy and, as far as I can tell, I appear to be the highest karma openly female member of HN.

For some of the social stuff, it helps "minorities" (including women, even though we are hardly a minority, mathematically speaking) if you learn to bet the odds differently when talking to people. Here is a bit I wrote about that: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/04/what-fool-be...

For homelessness: We are people. Stop viewing us as some Other. Also, most homeless people have health issues. Anything you can do to promote a wellness model is a good thing for the world. Hint: Help people eat better. Invite a homeless person to eat with you at Chipotle and buy them a Chipotle gift card or hand them some cash when you part.

I write very occasionally about what helps the homeless here: http://whathelpsthehomeless.blogspot.com/2015/03/good-food-i...

For climate and health stuff: Walk more, drive less. Recycle. Stop shaking hands. Stop blowing your nose around other people. (Go do that in a public bathroom, with the stall door shut.)

There will always be problems. Do what you can, when you can. Find a way to make your peace with there never being enough.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#215

Post by jacobolus »

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…

Funny enough, there’s a link at the top of Bret’s essay here to an article describing how the community/movement excited about “effective altruism” has gone off the deep end worrying about the singularity and strong AI (not to mention proselytizing / self promotion) while ignoring more obvious concerns like poverty or climate change.

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/10/9124145/effective-altruism-glob...

> Effective altruism (or EA, as proponents refer to it) is more than a belief, though. It's a movement, and like any movement, it has begun to develop a culture, and a set of powerful stakeholders, and a certain range of worrying pathologies. At the moment, EA is very white, very male, and dominated by tech industry workers. And it is increasingly obsessed with ideas and data that reflect the class position and interests of the movement's members rather than a desire to help actual people.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#216

Post by grenzbegriff »

likeapub wrote: post #210
grenzbegriff wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

how much savings will u have by 27? do you have a house too?

I expect to have $500k by 27. No, I don't have a house, I split an apartment with a roommate close to work so I have a very short commute.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#217

Post by rwallace »

protomyth wrote: post #199
rwallace wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have energy sources that are much cheaper than coal when you take all the costs into account. If you start demanding that renewable energy must be cheaper than coal when coal gets huge effective subsidies and renewable energy gets none, that's an artificial constraint that makes the problem unsolvable.

Why does China use coal? If you truly want India and China to switch sources then you need to check all the boxes. No one is going to sacrifice when they are bootstrapping.

Why has China started investing heavily in renewable energy? For one, they want the status of a modern country that's leading the world in important matters; they don't want to be a shitty third world country stuck in the nineteenth century. For another, they're tired of constantly choking on coal smoke.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#218

Post by hanniabu »

grenzbegriff wrote: post #151
clock_tower wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations! I spent my 20s having spotty, unpredictable employment and chasing large personal projects that never paid off, so I'm looking at financial independence around 43 instead. ($55,000/year of dividend income, ignoring capital gains; this will be after the 15% tax on dividends.) I wish I'd taken this possibility seriously at an earlier point in my life; I commend you for doing that, and I hope you find g…

Thanks :) 43 still gives you about 20 more years than most people to do something other than earning money to spend! Imagine what you'll get to do with that kind of time. I love hearing from other people who have a similar plan. And of course I'll suggest you could be independent sooner if you reduce some spending. ;) But that's your tradeoff to consider.

You guys speak of dividends. I'm not good with stocks so pardon my novice. May I ask what you invest in that earns you the best dividends and keeps you diversified? I'm also assuming you reinvest the dividends? Are there any tips you can give for someone wanting to start doing this? Are there any tricks you have that help you pay less taxes? And tricks to how one should diversify?

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#219

Post by orangecat »

brandmeyer wrote: post #211
orangecat wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to need actual numbers for this to be a valid argument. Data centers use only 3 percent of global electricity production ( http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/12/17/under... ), and it seems unlikely that a noticeable portion of that is caused by CPU-intensive software that isn't already well-optimized.

This isn't world-changing by any means. Just as individuals can reduce our energy consumption with high-SEER HVAC systems, high-efficiency lighting, etc, I think that programmers as individuals can reduce energy consumption by using higher-efficiency computing languages.

Amdahl's law applies here: some things are just not worth worrying about. If you're Google or Facebook, you already have entirely selfish incentives to optimize your code. If you're not, and the performance of your "inefficient" software is acceptable to you and your users, the net environmental benefit of rewriting it in C is likely indistinguishable from zero. It may even be negative, if the increased development cost prevents you from improving energy efficiency elsewhere.

Re: What can a technologist do about climate change?

#220

Post by gnaritas »

NickM wrote: post #180
gnaritas wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear is low-carbon, but it's not renewable. Sure it is, Nuclear doesn't just mean uranium fission, fusion reactors are nuclear as well and they will be a big thing in the future and we get better at doing it.

> fusion reactors are nuclear as well and they will be a big thing in the future I used to think this as well, but I'm not sure I believe it anymore. I suspect that by the time we're able to make fusion power work, the solar/wind/batteries combo may be so cheap as to make fusion pointless for mainstream power generation.

Solar is fusion being mainstream :) however, smaller more local reactors will I think still be a huge part of our future as well.
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