What can a technologist do about climate change? (2015)
worrydream.com
worrydream.com
That means it is up to us, all of us, to identify the politicians who are delaying this and get them out of office very soon. In my opinion that is the next step in making meaningful progress and that is something anyone can contribute to if directed effectively. It's exciting seeing these kids around the world pressuring their politicians but I want to find an organized, well funded operation with only one objective, to prevent the wrong people from being (re)elected.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/magazine/climeworks-busin...
I mean, I understand there are likely technological problems to solve. Is there anywhere anybody who is looking for people to work on these problems, skills notwithstanding (I think I can learn)? Or are we just all waiting for each other to do something about it?
...even though they are not specifically for programmers. (A programmer mindset can help with many of those things.)
Upcoming challenges, for example, are grid balancing with the increasing amount of constantly changing renewable energy input, maybe to coordinate load on the grid with it (eg only start washing machines during the day when solar is available). Predicting near-future inputs from wind and sun forecast models also plays into this.
You can also always work on making things more energy-efficient or optimize processes so less energy is used (Manufacturing for example uses so much transport for in-between steps. Can we get rid of some of them?).
The holy grail is probably carbon capture. Some people are also working on that and might be able to use your expertise.
Another topic is mitigation. Enabling people especially in poorer countries to withstand increasingly frequent disturbances better - resilience - will help greatly. Many non-profits who work on this would love to have you help with technology. They can also connect you to ongoing state projects I think.
And then there is climate modelling. Some efforts are made to make the models accessible to the public, but it is hard. If someone put some work into this that would help a lot. Additionally, scientists are not the best coders. The best are working on the models, but in general the coding practices are severely lacking. You might be able to come around and just teach about that, and learn which kind of tools would be helpful. But then we know all we need to act at that front.
Do you have a list of places where scientists are inviting coders to come and talk to them about coding practices? (Or organizations that can help with this)
What are some non-profits who work on enabling people in poorer countries to withstand disturbances? Are they looking for coders?
Who is working on carbon capture and looking for volunteer collaborators?
The International Research Institute on Climate and Society at Columbia University's Earth Institute is looking for a programmer to work on their Data Library. Unfortunately I don't see a way to get a permalink to the job listing; you can find it by going to https://jobs.columbia.edu/ , clicking "SEARCH OPEN POSITIONS" in the left nav, and specifying Department 6061.
I'm not affiliated with the group. I actually interviewed for the position last week, but probably won't end up taking it.
I can tell you that every DOE lab has scientists and programmers working together. In fact, the two largest super computers, Summit and Sierra, are GPU based, and there's a huge decrease in power consumption. For example: Summit (#1) has ~7.5x the power of Titan (#9, and at the same facility: ORNL) but only uses ~20% more electricity (Summit and Sierra are GPU based)[0]. Aurora, the planned exascale machine, will be 5x Summit and only use 20MW (~2x power) (actually that's the number that's the hard upper limit). That's a big deal. And a bunch of teams there are working on making everything more efficient and how to better utilize resources.
I wish that he'd said more about 60% of everything used via electricity being "wasted". I suppose that it's largely the Carnot cycle. Given that the major sources are coal, natural gas and nuclear.
For coal and natural gas, that wasted energy means more than doubling CO2 emissions. But there's really no workaround, unless you use those fuels directly, and get all of your electricity from PV and wind.
That would be a major change. Maybe, as he argues for petroleum, it's better to just not use that stuff as fuel. Just as chemical feedstocks.
Edit: grammar
This tries to make that easy, for example: https://www.yourstake.org/ask/vanguard-vanguard-tell-compani...
A large factor in the current ecological crisis is our agricultural footprint, and I think there is a lot of scope to innovate there.
For example one of his sidebar statistics shows that fully 50% of US land is devoted to agriculture. That seems huge, and something to be addressed in itself. I think we should be aiming to return land to nature as far as possible.
Growing rice on floating platforms at sea? Lab meat? underground or tall-tower hydroponic salad farms? Etc, etc.
Come join if you'd like to work on this!
Side note: anyone know why there's been a recent uptick in nuclear articles on HN?
Adapt, evolve...and plant trees. Focus on meaning, worrying about climate change is a fools purpose imo
the bigger picture is not climate change look past it.
Except that animals are simply NOT adapting fast enough and more than 60% of animals and a possibly higher percentage of bugs has disappeared in 30 years.
So, unfortunately, the natural world is not adapting and evolving. Things are just dying.
> We are heading there anyways
Imagine you see a wall in front of you. If you crawl towards that wall (like the world would do naturally) it won't hurt that much hitting it. If you fly a jet airplane into that wall (like we are doing) you will likely die in a fiery crash. Natural world = crawl like baby, Human Climate Change = fly jet.
The RATE of change is what's the problem here.
We are probably locked in to 2-3C rise at this point, and realistically we may hit more like 4C or more eventually with politically realistic emissions scenarios.
If emissions go completely uncontrolled in the future, an ultimate warming of 10C or more, while not likely, is not out of the question. That would be completely civilization-ending, and would cause a mass extinction of scale not seen since the P-T boundary several hundred million years ago.
This is a problem we are causing. We need to take it seriously. Anyone who buys homeowner's insurance should agree with that logic.
Though I don't agree with their comment about worrying is for fools.
Edit: It doesn't seem that's what OP is getting at. But __I__ think we need to talk about sequestration in conjunction with radically lowering our emissions.
Does this mean that within the space of a few decades, we'd need to suck back in a large proportion of the gases that we've been pumping out globally 24/7 over a century? Are there realistic numbers for this?
If you're saying it is foolish to not expand, then I'd agree with you. But I think there's a lot we can learn about terraforming our own planet, because frankly we don't have any good options out there currently. Mars is not yet viable (Venus is worse, other planets are too far away). And even if we started terraforming with radical means (like nuking the ice caps and tossing asteroids at it), Mars still wouldn't be viable by the time our planet's temperature rises to catastrophic levels.
So no, I don't think it is a fool's task. In fact I'd say it is foolish to not be concerned.
In addition to that, I think its our purpose to advance and expand throughout the universe for as long as we can do it. We will likely face extermination by that intelligent system or merge with it. I think its more important to evolve that system.
When I typed a "fools purpose" I mostly mean its meaningless in the scheme of things to devote all this worry, concern, everything surrounding a warming home planet. Yes, there are scientifically concerning results that it could be devastating. But I highly doubt that humanity will not adapt to whatever changes come that way, life on the planet can be re-engineered, created, modified.
Though your point of, hypothetically, will a warming climate end the potential of what I've said? As long as we can create energy, then no I doubt it.
I agree with this, but that doesn't change my previous statements. Take this scenario (exaggerated, but to make a point). Assume that no crops could survive outside we'd have to move to do all our agriculture as hydro or aeroponics. I'd call that catastrophic and at least in the beginning it would put a significant stress on every living person. A lot of people would starve. But yes, humans would survive.
Most people don't think we're going to turn the planet into a place humans can't live in (I mean we're pretty innovative and adaptable). But a lot of people do recognize that the affects will result in a lot of people dying and significant stressors that will extremely hinder forward progress (to such an extent I think most agree that it will set us back).
So I __kind of__ agree with you, but your position also appears very naive. Though I do love the optimism and faith you have for humans as a species.
I strongly believe that we will not be set back by climate change, in fact I think it will spur an innovative age and result in a boom of more technology.
Also merging with intelligent systems may one day eliminate the need for crops all together as our energy source.
My position, naive? No, it is optimistic that humans will push to innovate and continue the evolution of technology, while also not worrying about a changing environment, whatever may come of it. Then we will build through space, we are at the beginning moments (last 50ish years) of space exploration and expansion.
Think 1000 years from now, the "climate change" worries of the 2000s will be viewed as primitive worry. So in the long run, we are either dead or this is viewed as primitive.
Problem is that lots of people are going to die. People that don't have to. People that wouldn't have if we acted sooner. That's what people are worried about.
Will the human species survive? Yes. Will lots of people die? Also yes. I'd rather it not come down to it, especially since it didn't have to be this way.
Let me repeat that. It didn't have to be this way.
What happens when you take away organized human life (like a relatively well functioning government)? You won't get any technological improvement.
Technological improvement requires stable societies and climate change will disrupt all societies on earth. It's even completely plausible that organized human life won't be possible if we don't tackle climate change now.
So any hope of developing the technology you are talking about rests on huge efforts to solve the climate problem.
(Please don't do violence...)
But honestly, at this point, it's futile, idiots are idiots and people who aren't idiots need to fix things within our political system and then send a bunch of the top idiots to jail to teach them a lesson. My patience for gradualism has entirely dissolved. If you're one of the many Californians of HN here please devote some time to kicking Feinstein out of office next round, her continued republican-lite attitude isn't getting anything done.
It takes a lot of patience, but I find after a while they feel like they've been heard and they become more open to learning more about the science behind climate change, feel less threatened by it, etc. The media is doing a poor job of educating the public on the issue. It's also slow, because it's a one-on-one approach that takes a lot of time. But I figure it's worth it if I can change one climate-denier's mind.