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

Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 179 posts

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#91

Post by beatpanda »

xfactor973 wrote: post #32

I planted about 50 fruit trees and bushes when I moved into my new place. I also converted the electric to 100% renewable. Other than dumping my natural gas heater I'm not sure what's left that I can do to help reduce climate change.

Your personal choices aren't going to make a difference. If you really want to help, you need to organize with others to make systemic changes to our economy and our energy system. Everywhere in the world, there are fights to prevent new fossil fuel infrastructure from being built and to shut existing infrastructure down. Join them! It's fun.

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#92

Post by throwaway16410 »

dflock wrote: post #24

If you'd like to know what you can do about this personally, here's some solid ideas from Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

At my company, Genability, we all read and enjoyed that Bret Victor post and we've been using it for recruitment.

If you want to help scale clean energy technology and get a healthy dose of optimism in the process, we're hiring: http://genability.com/careers/vp_of_engineering.html

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#93

Post by losteric »

adventured wrote: post #17
AznHisoka wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're asking people to stop wanting money? The people who want to solve life threatening problems will do so and the people who want to make "trivial" apps to make lots of money will do so. Asking us to just do the former is pointless. Also what about people who aren't entrepreneurs and work at industries like finance, law, and first country problems? Shouldn't they be held under the same scrutiny? What's so spec…

You make an extremely good point. I had not considered that every time a person complains about duplication of apps, or developers that make trivial apps for money (instead of 'changing the world'), the same standard should be applied to the tens of millions of service and industrial jobs that are mostly clones of each other and could be considered trivial by the same standard. For example: we really need to do somet…

Are you proposing that we should intentionally keep around duplicate labor?

Duplication of work is a cardinal sin of technology and automation. Millions of jobs have already been destroyed by software, and the rate of obsoletion is only growing. A few thousand LoC and a couple racks of hardware can destroy tens of thousands of jobs. That's why software companies are highly valued. Aggregated across the entire industry and we've replaced millions of jobs already... Hopefully we'll see that number hit tens of millions within a couple decades.

Apps... most apps are frivolous, bordering toys. They add value like a hot dog vendor adds value to a baseball game. Why would app creators be treated any differently?

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#94

Post by losteric »

fche wrote: post #45
appleflaxen wrote: post #3

There is a whole lot of climate change evidence coming out that is terrifying. At what point does this become so scary that something happens to increase the taxes on fossil fuels so that consumption will go down? Falling renewable prices are not enough, and use-based taxes are the single best way to let individuals make their own decisions about what/how much to use. Carbon credits are a good market-based solution t…

"There is a whole lot of climate change evidence coming out that is terrifying." Do you think any of that evidence is terrifying to skeptics? If not, think about why not.

Simple: They ignore it. They imagine it's lies spread by corporate elite trying to profit from fear mongering and anti-american technology.

Hilarious considering the truth.

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#95

Post by chillydawg »

donatj wrote: post #58
codecamper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very sad that reefs are dying, but it seems that their whole existence was very much tied to a very specific amount of carbon in the atmosphere. (about 265 ppm co2) The scary thing is that these reefs are so incredibly diverse & their creation took millions of years. Millions of years to create and they can be globally destroyed in just 200 or so years. It's also scary is to consider what else may be balanced ju…

How did they survive the ice ages and previous warm ages, and what makes this different?

Individual reefs probably would not have survived. The polyps would have taken root elsewhere (probably closer to the equator in ice ages). The organisms have evolved over millions of years and are clearly hardy to drastic climate change. The issue is that the reefs themselves will certainly die and big, new ones won't form for thousands of years. So from our point of view, they're "extinct".

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#96

Post by CalRobert »

gedy wrote: post #20
blondie9x wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. Washington is too tainted by vested interests that seek to procrastinate shift. Time has literally run out. From here we are already in catch up mode. It seems like a revolution is necessary to stop them from acting against humanity's long term existence for their short term financial gain.

Washington could be taken over by the Green party, ban fossil fuels, etc - and we'd still be in trouble due to China, et al with their increasing CO2 output. Reminds me a bit of banning plastic bags in California to help the ocean. That's lovely, but given Asia dumps something like 150 times the amount plastics into the ocean, so is basically meaningless.

My santa Monica alleyway went from garbagr-strewn to... Well not perfect but a lot better after SM banned them.

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#97

Post by guscost »

ocschwar wrote: post #90
ageofwant wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what are the consequences of you being wrong ?

"At least some of the activism is motivated by fear, when people notice this or that smaller problem, get very scared by warnings of much bigger problems to come, and make the not-completely-rational choice to give up freedom for the promise of safety. " And just what "freedoms" are we talking about here? Please elaborate so we can mock your argument a little more thoroughly. -----

The freedom to drill an oil well on land you own, for example.

And by the way, I'm very used to "not being treated with respect" from the opposition on this topic. Usually they aren't so eager to keep mentioning it, though. What's the deal?

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#98

Post by beatpanda »

downandout wrote: post #73
blondie9x wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. Washington is too tainted by vested interests that seek to procrastinate shift. Time has literally run out. From here we are already in catch up mode. It seems like a revolution is necessary to stop them from acting against humanity's long term existence for their short term financial gain.

>Washington is too tainted by vested interests One could say this about both sides of this issue. Clean tech has utilized an enormous amount of lobbying and been given substantial subsidies as a result - despite the lack of appreciable results.

> despite the lack of appreciable results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#99

Post by gerbilly »

whyenot wrote: post #28
gedy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Washington could be taken over by the Green party, ban fossil fuels, etc - and we'd still be in trouble due to China, et al with their increasing CO2 output. Reminds me a bit of banning plastic bags in California to help the ocean. That's lovely, but given Asia dumps something like 150 times the amount plastics into the ocean, so is basically meaningless.

> banning plastic bags in California to help the ocean They were banned because they don't decompose, so they end up all over the place. Not just in the ocean, but on the beach, in creeks, lakes, anywhere near a highway, etc. As an example local to Silicon Valley, Stevens Creek used to be completely clogged with plastic bags. It's gotten a lot better now.

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#100

Post by giaour »

downandout wrote: post #79
nothrabannosir wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of down-vote worthy responses to OP, and more downvotes. But in this case, I honestly don't see it: why is this not a fair question? I mean, in a genuinely neutral sense; isn't he right?

>in a genuinely neutral sense Asking if someone supports politicians that claim to be eco-conscious while raising campaign money, who are almost universally left-leaning, is far from "neutral". There are places on the Internet to espouse political support for either side. This, however, is not one of them.

Supporting environmentally friendly legislation is orthogonal to the economic concerns that divide the left and right. It's true that environmentalists are associated with the left in the US, but that's not true everywhere in the world.
Post reply on HN