91–100 of 193 posts
The only thing that can save us from the cataclysm of climate change is technology. It's too late for social engineering and politics.
Technology also has a tendency to cause its own, new, set of problems, which can be worse than problems they’re trying to solve.
It’s not a panacea, and I would not recommend counting on technology to solve it either.
Respectfully, I’m getting fatigued from hearing about climate changes. Not because I don’t care, but because I feel powerless to do anything major about it. For all the recycling I’ve done, a single factory can undo in just a day. Being defeatist isn’t exactly productive, but hearing that calamities are happening on a daily basis doesn’t help much either. I really do think the only way this’ll get better is after som…
I do not own a car, I do not fly, I buy clothes used or new just once a year. My newest smartphone I bought five years ago (and I just bought a new battery for $10, so I can use it for five more years). My utility company stats says my energy consumption is overall very low. I eat meat once a month. I try to own as few things as possible. I try to write and deploy code in energy efficient languages (Go, Rust, C, ...)…
For example rather than turning the heat down, buying a solar hot water heater let’s you save money, take long hot showers, and be toasty in the winter while also being more environmentally friendly. Carbon credits are poor policy vs carbon taxes for a host of reasons. However, if you really want to feel better about your personal choices effective leverage is available. At the same time a huge number of what amounts to scams are also out there.
PS: Of course lowering consumption has other environmental benefits
So one question I've had for a while is if we are currently facing such a catastrophe with increased global heat why don't we go ahead and start conducting massive explosions to kick dust up into the air. When Krakatoa went off it caused global cooling throughout the entire world because of the amount of matter it introduced into the air so why don't we do the same right now at least as a stopgap measure if things ar…
fear of unintended consequences, i imagine. unless it goes off without a hitch, there will be much blame. for me, it's a conversation of responsibility. its obvious that we (as a species) have not been responsible with the resources of this planet (see consumer culture, disposal culture, and planned obsolescence). it makes more sense to attack the problem at its causes rather than band aids.
It depends on if the band aids apply enough pressure to stop the patient from bleeding out. We don’t know how much about positive feedback loops for climate change. Things like the tundra melting and releasing more CO2 could create large inflection points which we don’t understand very well. Every day we inch closer to one of these inflection points, gambling the point is further out.
It is my belief that band aids are necessary to prevent nightmare scenarios from occurring. We can quibble about moral hazards and figure out what to do with ocean acidification once we aren’t at the precipice.
If there aren’t positive feedback loops I agree pushing back the problem for a few decades doesn’t help us that much so long as the root causes go unsolved.
[Edit] As it relates to responsibility, unfortunately those most responsible will due to their wealth carry the fewest consequences. We need a way to internalize the externalities of climate change to keep people responsible rather than leaving the global poor to suffer the largest impacts.
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I sympathize with and share your exhaustion, but I force myself to pay attention to these stories. They remind me why Climate Change is always my #1 priority when voting in elections, and when thinking about the world writ large. There was an editorial in The Atlantic a couple of years ago—which I now can’t seem to find—titled something like “We should be covering climate change like it’s the only story that matters”…
They remind me why Climate Change is always my #1 priority when voting in elections > The problem I always face is that I want to vote for a party that want to do something against climate change but the party that claims to be ecologist wants to get away from nuclear without any real plans like they did in Germany. I believe that right now, we should rely on nuclear power and that it's the only way in the short to m…
The only thing that can save us from the cataclysm of climate change is technology. It's too late for social engineering and politics.
Fracking did manage to drop our emissions phasing out coal. But politics gets in the way of natural gas all the time. Politics got in the way of nuclear as well. Also, if you truly want to cut emissions, stop caring about "per capita" and force your politicians to start holding the biggest polluters accountable and the countries not decreasing their emissions.
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I think most consumer-facing plastics need to go. They're one of the major catalysts, if not the catalyst for our hyperconsumerist habits. Go back to glass bottles for things. Give subsidies to companies that use glass for inventory loss and such. Bring back the milkman who refills your empty jugs.
>Go back to glass bottles for things. Give subsidies to companies that use glass for inventory loss and such. Bring back the milkman who refills your empty jugs. Shouldn't we tax the externalities of plastic and let the market decide whether it's worth it? In your example of using glass bottles: sure it gets rid of plastic, but what about the costs of glass? eg. increased weight or energy/water needed to clean them.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sympathize with and share your exhaustion, but I force myself to pay attention to these stories. They remind me why Climate Change is always my #1 priority when voting in elections, and when thinking about the world writ large. There was an editorial in The Atlantic a couple of years ago—which I now can’t seem to find—titled something like “We should be covering climate change like it’s the only story that matters”…
| Climate Change is always my #1 priority when voting in elections If every climate change candidate you favored for won in the US and Canada the impact on climate would be near zero. Why? Because China, Vietnam, India and Indonesia are now the majority contributors to emissions and they don't care about your agenda. Such are the unintended consequences of progressive agendas. We regulated 'dirty' businesses out of e…
I recommend the book “Unsettled” by Steven Koonan for a more empirical look at how these computer models work, and the deficiencies of trying to predict catastrophe with them. For instance, every climate model is wildly off when it tries to predict the climate changes starting in 1950. This article reads like a typical scare piece. The truth is, there’s just so many feedback loops in climate that we just don’t know w…
Koonin's book is highly misleading. You'd be better off spending your time reading IPCC reports, or, frankly, staring at a wall and picking your nose, than reading that contrarian drivel. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/that-obama-scient...
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> For all the recycling I’ve done, a single factory can undo in just a day. Tangential, but recycling is much less effective the reduced consumption. I think the problem with policy makers not moving on this front is a reflection of people not doing so. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to make people even believe in something that would require them to sacrifice their lifestyle, let alone actually commit to doing…
I think most consumer-facing plastics need to go. They're one of the major catalysts, if not the catalyst for our hyperconsumerist habits. Go back to glass bottles for things. Give subsidies to companies that use glass for inventory loss and such. Bring back the milkman who refills your empty jugs.
Which is all to say that I totally agree.
Respectfully, I’m getting fatigued from hearing about climate changes. Not because I don’t care, but because I feel powerless to do anything major about it. For all the recycling I’ve done, a single factory can undo in just a day. Being defeatist isn’t exactly productive, but hearing that calamities are happening on a daily basis doesn’t help much either. I really do think the only way this’ll get better is after som…
> For all the recycling I’ve done, a single factory can undo in just a day. Tangential, but recycling is much less effective the reduced consumption. I think the problem with policy makers not moving on this front is a reflection of people not doing so. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to make people even believe in something that would require them to sacrifice their lifestyle, let alone actually commit to doing…