6 ms·

Sweet, so what should we build to change this? Giant carbon-sucking machines, cube-sats pointed at glaciers? (planet labs is doing cool stuff in this space, inc

Sweet, so what should we build to change this? Giant carbon-sucking machines, cube-sats pointed at glaciers? (planet labs is doing cool stuff in this space, including a project to count every tree on Earth every day). Solutions welcome!

ocschwar 10y ago
Train tracks in place of highways, for starters. Windmills and panels everywhere.
- titojankowski 10y ago
  Yea totally! Does Hyperloop count as train tracks? I wonder what upcoming inventions in windmills look like...
  - ocschwar 10y ago
    Met a guy who was trying to sell a setup to plasma-fy the air along the edges of turbine wings to squeeze a bit more efficiency. There's room for improvement still.
    - titojankowski 10y ago
      Wow crazy, I don't understand plasma-fy tho...some device on the edge of the windmill blade would change the nature of the air to reduce friction?
      - ocschwar 10y ago
        Yes. Not necessarily reduce it, but change the profile around the blade to get more out of the wind.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > Yea totally! Does Hyperloop count as train tracks? Not until it exists.
nickbauman 10y ago
Plant trees. Lots of them.
- titojankowski 10y ago
  Anyone working on new tech to plant trees more efficiently? Or engineering trees optimized for carbon sequestration?
  - burkaman 10y ago
    http://www.biocarbonengineering.com/ http://www.biocarbonengineering.com/
    - titojankowski 10y ago
      "Since it is generally advantageous to have a heterogeneous mix of tree species planted in the same area, the planting UAV is capable of carrying a mix of seeds and control their planting pattern." Cooooooooooool. Thanks!
  - thinkcontext 10y ago
    Technology is not the biggest challenge to reforesting, people are. What good is planting millions of trees with robots if poor peasants graze their goats in the area that kill them all? To succeed you need to get them to buy into the outcome. China's efforts on the Loess Plateau has been held up as a success in reforestation which has also benefited the local agricultural economy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8JNXHcBMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8JNXHcBMA "The area of restoration on the Loess Plateau in China is the size of Belgium and thousands of years of subsistence farming had made it barren and infertile. In 1995 the Chinese Government, with support from The World Bank, took drastic action to rehabilitate the plateau, and local people -- seen as both perpetuators and victims of the devastation -- became part of the solution. They completely transformed 8.6 million acres of wasteland into hyper-productive land. This caused a 300% increase in agricultural income and enabled millions of local family farmers to break free from entrenched poverty."
roughcoat 10y ago
We should do nothing, because while interesting, this is a nonevent. Parts of that article are wildly exaggerated or outright incorrect, trying to make this sound like some big deal. It's really not. Sometimes in nature, things happen quickly. Look up glacial surge, for example. Just because a river dried up basically overnight because it got beheaded, it doesn't mean there's some global catastrophe playing out. It just means the glacier receded to a point where the terrain favored the other branch.
jimnotgym 10y ago
Perhaps what we really need is political will. It has been much said in the UK that wind power has made various great strides forward, in terms of being able to operate in a greater range of wind speeds for example. This is in pursuit of EU green energy targets. With Brexit it sounds like the government are keen to resort to fossil fuels. Luddites
spodek 10y ago
At a low level: - Have fewer children - Burn fewer fossil fuels (less driving, flying, heating, cooling, more wearing sweaters at home in winter, etc) - Eat less meat - Develop technologies to create energy without fossil fuels At a higher level - Stop associating consumption and material accumulation with happiness - Stop targeting growth (population, GDP, etc) as solution to so many problems - Take personal responsibility for what you do. Stop saying if others don't change my change won't make a difference. You are responsible for what you do even if others don't change. At the top level: - Change you beliefs and goals so that instead of asking others, you find what you can do and do it. There is overwhelming amounts of information for what you can do already on the web. If you want to act, act.
- crazy2be 10y ago
  I'm not convinced having fewer children will help anything and I wish people would stop repeating this. People emit very few greenhouse gasses as a virtue of their existence, the extreme majority of them are emitted by lifestyle choices. Even in developed countries the differences are stark. Qatar emits 54.7 tons of CO2 equivalent per capita, the United States 24.3 tons, Germany 12.3 tons, Switzerland 7.2 tons. A difference of almost 10x, with countries that all have similar standards of living! In a relatively undeveloped country like Burundi, the emissions are a mere 0.4 tons per capita[0]. A difference of literally 100x! The best fix is a revenue-neutral carbon tax, with import tariffs on goods from countries that do not have such taxes (i.e. China). This internalizes the externalized costs of CO2 emissions, automatically encouraging development of more energy-efficient everything. [0] Data from 2000, unfortunately, but the numbers have not changed in magnitude since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...
  - titojankowski 10y ago
    Have either of you checked out Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change?" http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ Would be cool to hear how it resonates (or not) with your perspectives.
Mz 10y ago
Sweet, so what should we build to change this? A lot more passive solar architecture and pedestrian-friendly spaces.

ocschwar 10y ago

Train tracks in place of highways, for starters. Windmills and panels everywhere.

titojankowski 10y ago
Yea totally! Does Hyperloop count as train tracks? I wonder what upcoming inventions in windmills look like...
- ocschwar 10y ago
  Met a guy who was trying to sell a setup to plasma-fy the air along the edges of turbine wings to squeeze a bit more efficiency. There's room for improvement still.
  - titojankowski 10y ago
    Wow crazy, I don't understand plasma-fy tho...some device on the edge of the windmill blade would change the nature of the air to reduce friction?
    - ocschwar 10y ago
      Yes. Not necessarily reduce it, but change the profile around the blade to get more out of the wind.
- flukus 10y ago
  > Yea totally! Does Hyperloop count as train tracks? Not until it exists.

nickbauman 10y ago

Plant trees. Lots of them.

titojankowski 10y ago
Anyone working on new tech to plant trees more efficiently? Or engineering trees optimized for carbon sequestration?
- burkaman 10y ago
  http://www.biocarbonengineering.com/ http://www.biocarbonengineering.com/
  - titojankowski 10y ago
    "Since it is generally advantageous to have a heterogeneous mix of tree species planted in the same area, the planting UAV is capable of carrying a mix of seeds and control their planting pattern." Cooooooooooool. Thanks!
- thinkcontext 10y ago
  Technology is not the biggest challenge to reforesting, people are. What good is planting millions of trees with robots if poor peasants graze their goats in the area that kill them all? To succeed you need to get them to buy into the outcome. China's efforts on the Loess Plateau has been held up as a success in reforestation which has also benefited the local agricultural economy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8JNXHcBMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8JNXHcBMA "The area of restoration on the Loess Plateau in China is the size of Belgium and thousands of years of subsistence farming had made it barren and infertile. In 1995 the Chinese Government, with support from The World Bank, took drastic action to rehabilitate the plateau, and local people -- seen as both perpetuators and victims of the devastation -- became part of the solution. They completely transformed 8.6 million acres of wasteland into hyper-productive land. This caused a 300% increase in agricultural income and enabled millions of local family farmers to break free from entrenched poverty."

roughcoat 10y ago

We should do nothing, because while interesting, this is a nonevent. Parts of that article are wildly exaggerated or outright incorrect, trying to make this sound like some big deal. It's really not. Sometimes in nature, things happen quickly. Look up glacial surge, for example. Just because a river dried up basically overnight because it got beheaded, it doesn't mean there's some global catastrophe playing out. It just means the glacier receded to a point where the terrain favored the other branch.

jimnotgym 10y ago

Perhaps what we really need is political will. It has been much said in the UK that wind power has made various great strides forward, in terms of being able to operate in a greater range of wind speeds for example. This is in pursuit of EU green energy targets. With Brexit it sounds like the government are keen to resort to fossil fuels. Luddites

spodek 10y ago

At a low level: - Have fewer children - Burn fewer fossil fuels (less driving, flying, heating, cooling, more wearing sweaters at home in winter, etc) - Eat less meat - Develop technologies to create energy without fossil fuels At a higher level - Stop associating consumption and material accumulation with happiness - Stop targeting growth (population, GDP, etc) as solution to so many problems - Take personal responsibility for what you do. Stop saying if others don't change my change won't make a difference. You are responsible for what you do even if others don't change. At the top level: - Change you beliefs and goals so that instead of asking others, you find what you can do and do it. There is overwhelming amounts of information for what you can do already on the web. If you want to act, act.

crazy2be 10y ago
I'm not convinced having fewer children will help anything and I wish people would stop repeating this. People emit very few greenhouse gasses as a virtue of their existence, the extreme majority of them are emitted by lifestyle choices. Even in developed countries the differences are stark. Qatar emits 54.7 tons of CO2 equivalent per capita, the United States 24.3 tons, Germany 12.3 tons, Switzerland 7.2 tons. A difference of almost 10x, with countries that all have similar standards of living! In a relatively undeveloped country like Burundi, the emissions are a mere 0.4 tons per capita[0]. A difference of literally 100x! The best fix is a revenue-neutral carbon tax, with import tariffs on goods from countries that do not have such taxes (i.e. China). This internalizes the externalized costs of CO2 emissions, automatically encouraging development of more energy-efficient everything. [0] Data from 2000, unfortunately, but the numbers have not changed in magnitude since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...
- titojankowski 10y ago
  Have either of you checked out Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change?" http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ Would be cool to hear how it resonates (or not) with your perspectives.

Mz 10y ago

Sweet, so what should we build to change this? A lot more passive solar architecture and pedestrian-friendly spaces.