8 ms·

Ouch. I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest of the time I have left. Should I even bother with my current career in tech, or w

Ouch. I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest of the time I have left. Should I even bother with my current career in tech, or would it be better to quit it and do something that could have even a slight impact now? These articles are great, but preaching to the choir. What should any of us do? I'm seriously and sincerely asking. Are there any suggestions, from a personal stand point i.e. excluding a completely new economic model and government structure? Is it to drive less and cut out meat? (done) Buy less stuff? Support the right organizations and political candidates? What if one is doing all of those things already, now what? Just sit here and watch our homes go up in flames as the entire place becomes a desert? Some actionable things would be great to have.

Reason077 8y ago
Don’t give up on tech. It’s technology that offers the best hope of solving these problems. Consider applying your skills to the renewable energy sector, companies working on transport electrification, and other “clean tech” sectors. These are exciting growth industries and you’ll be making a difference.
- catawbasam 8y ago
  Yup. Also energy monitoring and efficiency. Lots of cheap improvements are still available, especially in areas with old building stock.
ForHackernews 8y ago
If you want the honest but depressing answer: it's probably too late. Don't have kids unless you want them to have a worse life than you've had. On the plus side, the worst consequences from climate change will occur after we're dead. Just enjoy the rest of your life and try not to think about it too much. After all, that's what everyone else has been doing.
- digitalsushi 8y ago
  Even if the math ends up that we are indeed doomed, this type of behavior is not aligned with the human spirit. If we get lung cancer from smoking, we can learn from it, defy it, and /stop smoking/. Or we can become the vice incarnate, and die with the smug satisfaction that we were right because we gave no hope. I want to spend the rest of my life on a planet struggling to survive, not partying to death.
- pier25 8y ago
  Sadly I agree. Climate change is one of the reasons we're not having kids. In part because they would have had a very bad life, but also because it's the best for the planet. Reducing consumption of resources is not working, so we should start thinking about controlling population growth.
  - gepi79 8y ago
    If you want kids then have kids. Individual actions do not matter globally. We are far away from global overpopulation. Unless people insist on fossil fuel, waste of resources and animal products as food. More people are needed for more work for a better world. Have a good life because it is important for work for improvement. Improvement means better technology. I know about the dangerous situation but I am still optimistic for humans. http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127 http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127 https://thinkprogress.org/solar-wind-keep-getting-cheaper-33c38350fb95/ https://thinkprogress.org/solar-wind-keep-getting-cheaper-33... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdLRiaCjRkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdLRiaCjRkw https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-carbon/scientists-say-cost-of-sucking-carbon-from-thin-air-could-tumble-idUSKCN1J325H https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-carbon/scie... https://phys.org/news/2017-09-solar-to-fuel-recycles-co2-ethanol-ethylene.html https://phys.org/news/2017-09-solar-to-fuel-recycles-co2-eth... https://www.or.is/carbfix https://www.or.is/carbfix
    - pier25 8y ago
      > Individual actions do not matter globally. The forest is still composed by trees. > We are far away from global overpopulation. Unless people insist on fossil fuel, waste of resources and animal products as food. You are technically right, of course, but if humans were rational creatures we would have acted on climate change when the evidence was presented to the world.
      - gepi79 8y ago
        > The forest is still composed by trees. Yes, but most people do not improve their behavior until nature or some culture or some law enforces the change. The efforts of many are wasted by the ignorance or carelessness or selfishness or insanity or lack of choice of many others.
mc32 8y ago
evangelize in high birthrate countries things like contraception and encourage education especially of women. The fewer people destroying virgin forests and becoming western style consumers the lesser the better for environmental health. An earth of 7.5 billion is more sustainable than an earth of 10 billion. 7.5 will live better lives than a world of 10, given sociopolitical realities.
- Robotbeat 8y ago
  I like the idea of helping with education and stuff, but why not instead help them develop clean energy? I’m just REALLY not a fan of the “can’t let the 3rd world have so many people and then develop to 1st world standards” thing. It may technically help the problem, but it feels like soft racism and proto-eugenicism, at least from the perspective of people living in those countries. It gives me the creeps, although I’m sure that’s not your intention. Also, I’m convinced that the main way to solve these problems is human ingenuity. And that can’t just include people in the Western world.
  - lkbm 8y ago
    Third world countries are going to become first world countries, barring as disaster. When they do, they'll use a lot more resources per capita, but their population growth will drop dramatically. Switching them over sooner is a boon for the environment. Keeping people poor or would be a soft racism/proto-eugenicism, but reduce child mortality and empower women with contraception (as an option they can choose, not pushed coercive) are pretty unambiguously good. I mostly donate to the Against Malaria Foundation both as my anti-poverty charity and my pro-environment charity. They're rated well on effectiveness. I haven't done much research into highly-effective charities that provide contraception or related educational materials, but https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/causes/women-charities https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/causes/women-charities has some that seem relevant. Women's rights in general is usually a pretty good proxy for both "let women not have babies when they don't want to" and "give women options for fulfilling lives other than just having babies".
- taejo 8y ago
  Your comment mentions its own fatal flaw: "becoming western style consumers". From what we've seen in the last hundred years, that's strongly positively correlated with (and probably causes) decreasing birthrates. The only other broadly successful way to decrease birthrates was to make it the law, and the one country that did that has abandoned it because of the negative economic effects of too-low birthrates.
gepi79 8y ago
Keep your job if you like it or need it. What you can do: - Do not panic. A good life is important for work for improvement. - Yes to all of your suggestions. You are vegan ? Good for you and the rest of the world. - Tell other people how important and urgent change is. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw/vid... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJRjK20fHylJyf-HiBtqI2w/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJRjK20fHylJyf-HiBtqI2w/vid... https://lustysociety.org/ https://lustysociety.org/
seren 8y ago
I remember reading that blog post a few years ago : https://jancovici.com/en/climate-change/acting-individually/doing-ones-good-deed-regarding-climate-change-what-is-the-impact-of-individual-actions/ https://jancovici.com/en/climate-change/acting-individually/... It is relatively practical and takes into account the ratio cost or difficulty vs impact It boils down to using less energy for transportation or consumption (food or otherwise)
jerf 8y ago
"I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest of the time I have left." It is a grave life error to assign excessive likelihood to the doomsayers. I've been reading about inevitable doom for 25 years now. Some of what I read as a kid dated to the 60s and the guaranteed dates of inevitable doom had already passed by the time I read them in the early 90s. Even assuming they are completely 100% right about the problems, which is frankly a big assumption, they rarely, if ever, even remotely account for the fact that people and the economy change in reaction to problems. Also, consider the possibility that this feeling of hopelessness is something that perhaps somebody wants to instill in you. Why? Who benefits? Are their hands as clean as you suppose? Are you sure? I'm a big fan of "follow the money"; where most people fuck that up is that they only want to follow the money sometimes, when it suits them. Nope... always follow it. "Follow the money" is almost always used wrong; you don't need it to debunk the people you already don't trust, you need it to vet the people you do. Doomsaying has been exceedingly profitable over the past ~60 years. (It's been profitable even farther back than that, but mass market doomsaying really took off somewhere around then, which is where the real money is.) Do not forget to take that into account. (Also, as my post implies, don't assume I'm speaking just to the particular doom de jour, about which you might still have emotional reactions. I'm talking about nuclear war, population bombs, a multitude of claims we're running out of some resource, trash management issues, a wide variety of eschatological claims, all sorts of things I've read in the last 30 years. You may say "But jerf, some of those are still problems and may be problems in the future" and I say, I agree. I often like to say "Stand up. Point in a random direction. You are pointing at a problem." There are always problems and always will be problems. But we're not talking about problems... we're talking about doom. The doom has not happened. I believe fully in environmental problems both in the present and the future. I do not anywhere near fully believe in inevitable doom.)
- neltnerb 8y ago
  It's tricky when a preponderance of evidence and theory tells us that the lag time on the signal is several decades but human generations are also measured in decades. It doesn't matter how strong your negative feedback is if the system it's controlling is in thermal runaway by the time you apply a corrective signal. Maybe we can bandaid or mitigate the worst effects for some people. Probably richer people. But just see Harvey and wildfires and droughts for strong evidence that we will not do anything whatsoever even when cities are being destroyed by inaction.
HONEST_ANNIE 8y ago
Political action. Effective greenhouse gas taxation is a single thing that could solve the issue with the current system and be efficient. * It would have to be significantly higher than today. * It would tax exported emissions. * It would be well designed to avoid loopholes. It would include CO2 produced by food production (especially meat) and CO2 emissions from concrete.
s_kilk 8y ago
> Are there any suggestions, from a personal stand point i.e. excluding a completely new economic model and government structure? You've gone wrong at the very start. This isn't a problem that can be solved on an individual level, and the sad truth is that we do, in fact, need a new economic model. The sooner we own up to that the sooner we can move on with building it.
Comevius 8y ago
Improvise, adapt, overcome. Death is a natural part of life. Civilizations die too. It all happened before, and if we are as inventive as I think it will happen again in the distant future. So be inventive.
adrianN 8y ago
You can read through https://www.drawdown.org/solutions https://www.drawdown.org/solutions check what you can do yourself and talk to your peers and your political representatives to bring about collective action.
veebat 8y ago
Leverage. You don't throw your foe to the ground with brute force alone. You take him off-balance, and move in with good timing and technique. If your goal is solving climate change, well, the leverage isn't really in the technical solution, but in the political economy. We need a redesign. That's problem one. But if it's the power structure that needs changing, what affects it? Knowledge. Signalling. Valuation. And then you get into things that you can potentially change as a tech worker, by pushing for information systems that change our valuation metrics to match a philosophy of sustainability. And that positions actors who wish to take sustainable actions to have the leverage to realize it. That, I think, is the trick to feeling OK about it. At the end of the day, it's a war fought in an abstract, everyday sense: Build up your sense of morality and build your career around those principles. You might not be the hero, but you won't be the villain.
arglinugs 8y ago
I don't believe the CO2 levels we currently have (and are projected to have) in the atmosphere is a real threat. I don't believe the doomsday scenarios, apparently caused through cow farts and burning natural gas or from combustion engines. Energy must be expended to release CO2, and the energy is almost 0 in comparison to the energy needed to raise sea levels by say, 10 feet. We are talking millions of nuclear bombs worth of energy needed to accomplish that. There is something off with this. I don't believe the tiny amount of CO2 in our atmosphere will enable the sun to heat the planet to the doomsday levels. Predictions were made since the 80s, 90s, 00's that said our coastal cities should be literally destroyed by now... except that they aren't. There are a lot of people who stand to profit from the climate change lobby: professors, alternate energy producers, politicians, government, media. They all want money invested in THEIR pet projects. And conveniently, it serves as a great distraction from issues on the horizon that WILL have a guaranteed negative affect on your children's quality of life, but I wont get into that, since what I'm writing is divisive enough as it is. When it comes to the climate, you will be fine, we will be fine, our kids will be fine, the sky will not fall, the seas will not swallow up our cities (excluding regular weather), America will not become a desert (unless that super-volcano blows). It is sensationalism.
- kerbalspacepro 8y ago
  1. Carbon Dioxide stores lots of energy 2. The sun provides lots of energy 3. Therefore, carbon dioxide is able to store lots of solar energy 4. We are releasing lots of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere 5. Therefore, the atmosphere's ability to store solar energy is increasing What part of this logic don't you understand or disagree with?
  - arglinugs 8y ago
    You seem to have this all figured out then, so let me ask, approximately what point beyond your retirement will all of this happen? And I say "beyond your retirement" because that is the time you will probably give me, a time you won't have to worry about anyone taking you to task on your faulty science.
ricknew 8y ago
Read Donna Haraway, "Staying With the Trouble" for one take on how we can respond.
btilly 8y ago
There still are solutions. They, however, require that the environmental movement accept large scale engineering efforts aimed at adjusting our environment. Which runs counter to their instincts. See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312505967_Olivine_Weathering_against_Climate_Change https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312505967_Olivine_W... for one approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization for another. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering lists several more.
- Reason077 8y ago
  "accept large scale engineering efforts aimed at adjusting our environment." While these are interesting technologies, it's very difficult to see how they make sense economically. The cost/benefit ratio is invariably much worse than simply investing in emissions reductions. If we have $X to invest in climate mitigation, it's always going to be better to spend it on technologies that reduce carbon emissions: replacing fossil-fuel power plants, electrification of transport, etc. To my knowledge there is no technology that removes a ton of carbon from the atmosphere that comes anywhere close to being competitive with what it costs to not emit that ton of carbon in the first place. Of course, the day may come when all the easy carbon reductions have been made. If the climate is still not stabilising at that point, then we can start looking at all the climate engineering mega-projects.
  - btilly 8y ago
    First of all, emission reductions are not sufficient. The CO2 already emitted is enough to create a mass extinction from ocean acidification. Secondly the two techniques that I pointed to are, today, cheaper than emissions reductions. Third, the cost of other mitigations is improving over time as the price of renewable power (particularly solar) drops. So even approaches that are not currently cost-effective may be in the near future.
xapata 8y ago
Move north and develop a taste for jellyfish. Perhaps the memoirs of terminal cancer patients would be instructive. However, they benefit from frequentist statistics. We've only got Bayes for our experiment.
roryisok 8y ago
I go through cycles of being horribly depressed about the climate, and about mine and my family's future. In fact, I'm not even going to read this article because I know it'll set me off. I've learned that the only way to cope is to do everything I can personally (eat less meat, drive less, work from home, buy second hand , save energy, vote green, encourage my children and family and those around me to do the same) and then basically just get on with life and enjoy it as much as possible. If the worst happens, there's nothing we can do to prepare, not really. If some moonshot magical tech saves the day there's not much we can do to help or hinder that either. Focus on being the best person you can be, be a force for good, live life and appreciate what you have right now. Soak up fresh air and culture. If the world is consumed by fire in the next 50 years you'll be glad you did. And if it isn't, you'll still be glad.
currymj 8y ago
As far as I can tell, we are reasonably certain that the effects of climate change will be very bad. It’s hard to say exactly what will happen, though. The truly apocalyptic predictions are just not very likely. We are not going to be boiled alive or turn into Venus or whatever. It’s not going to get so hot that all plant matter catches on fire.
- jellicle 8y ago
  No scientist is predicting that "all plant matter will catch on fire". In fact I've never heard anyone predict that. If we do nothing, within the next 80 years large parts of the currently inhabited planet will be uninhabitable by humans, however. That's a sort of apocalypse. It's also the consensus view of scientists who study the global pollution epidemic.
  - currymj 8y ago
    I would bet you and I evaluate the problem similarly, I think there are remote but plausible scenarios that are almost intolerably bad (and these become likely if we keep polluting). But there are left-leaning but not scientifically literate people who honestly believe most life on Earth is already doomed. This obviously leads to despair in their political thinking and personal lives. I’ve even heard of people contemplating suicide. I don’t think this is warranted given what we know and the uncertainties involved. Humanity still has a future worth living for even in the most frightening scenarios.
tzs 8y ago
If you are in the United States, participate in Republican primaries in support of Republican politicians who acknowledge that climate change is a problem that we cannot ignore and need to start seriously acting on. There are in fact Republican politicians who support effective measures to address climate change that are compatible with traditional Republican market-based, conservative principles, such as a revenue neutral carbon tax, but they are greatly outnumbered by the ones who think climate change is fake or is just natural cycles that will swing the other way on their own and that we cannot influence anyway.

Reason077 8y ago

Don’t give up on tech. It’s technology that offers the best hope of solving these problems. Consider applying your skills to the renewable energy sector, companies working on transport electrification, and other “clean tech” sectors. These are exciting growth industries and you’ll be making a difference.

catawbasam 8y ago
Yup. Also energy monitoring and efficiency. Lots of cheap improvements are still available, especially in areas with old building stock.

ForHackernews 8y ago

If you want the honest but depressing answer: it's probably too late. Don't have kids unless you want them to have a worse life than you've had. On the plus side, the worst consequences from climate change will occur after we're dead. Just enjoy the rest of your life and try not to think about it too much. After all, that's what everyone else has been doing.

digitalsushi 8y ago
Even if the math ends up that we are indeed doomed, this type of behavior is not aligned with the human spirit. If we get lung cancer from smoking, we can learn from it, defy it, and /stop smoking/. Or we can become the vice incarnate, and die with the smug satisfaction that we were right because we gave no hope. I want to spend the rest of my life on a planet struggling to survive, not partying to death.
pier25 8y ago
Sadly I agree. Climate change is one of the reasons we're not having kids. In part because they would have had a very bad life, but also because it's the best for the planet. Reducing consumption of resources is not working, so we should start thinking about controlling population growth.
- gepi79 8y ago
  If you want kids then have kids. Individual actions do not matter globally. We are far away from global overpopulation. Unless people insist on fossil fuel, waste of resources and animal products as food. More people are needed for more work for a better world. Have a good life because it is important for work for improvement. Improvement means better technology. I know about the dangerous situation but I am still optimistic for humans. http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127 http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127 https://thinkprogress.org/solar-wind-keep-getting-cheaper-33c38350fb95/ https://thinkprogress.org/solar-wind-keep-getting-cheaper-33... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdLRiaCjRkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdLRiaCjRkw https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-carbon/scientists-say-cost-of-sucking-carbon-from-thin-air-could-tumble-idUSKCN1J325H https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-carbon/scie... https://phys.org/news/2017-09-solar-to-fuel-recycles-co2-ethanol-ethylene.html https://phys.org/news/2017-09-solar-to-fuel-recycles-co2-eth... https://www.or.is/carbfix https://www.or.is/carbfix
  - pier25 8y ago
    > Individual actions do not matter globally. The forest is still composed by trees. > We are far away from global overpopulation. Unless people insist on fossil fuel, waste of resources and animal products as food. You are technically right, of course, but if humans were rational creatures we would have acted on climate change when the evidence was presented to the world.
    - gepi79 8y ago
      > The forest is still composed by trees. Yes, but most people do not improve their behavior until nature or some culture or some law enforces the change. The efforts of many are wasted by the ignorance or carelessness or selfishness or insanity or lack of choice of many others.

mc32 8y ago

evangelize in high birthrate countries things like contraception and encourage education especially of women. The fewer people destroying virgin forests and becoming western style consumers the lesser the better for environmental health. An earth of 7.5 billion is more sustainable than an earth of 10 billion. 7.5 will live better lives than a world of 10, given sociopolitical realities.

Robotbeat 8y ago
I like the idea of helping with education and stuff, but why not instead help them develop clean energy? I’m just REALLY not a fan of the “can’t let the 3rd world have so many people and then develop to 1st world standards” thing. It may technically help the problem, but it feels like soft racism and proto-eugenicism, at least from the perspective of people living in those countries. It gives me the creeps, although I’m sure that’s not your intention. Also, I’m convinced that the main way to solve these problems is human ingenuity. And that can’t just include people in the Western world.
- lkbm 8y ago
  Third world countries are going to become first world countries, barring as disaster. When they do, they'll use a lot more resources per capita, but their population growth will drop dramatically. Switching them over sooner is a boon for the environment. Keeping people poor or would be a soft racism/proto-eugenicism, but reduce child mortality and empower women with contraception (as an option they can choose, not pushed coercive) are pretty unambiguously good. I mostly donate to the Against Malaria Foundation both as my anti-poverty charity and my pro-environment charity. They're rated well on effectiveness. I haven't done much research into highly-effective charities that provide contraception or related educational materials, but https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/causes/women-charities https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/causes/women-charities has some that seem relevant. Women's rights in general is usually a pretty good proxy for both "let women not have babies when they don't want to" and "give women options for fulfilling lives other than just having babies".
taejo 8y ago
Your comment mentions its own fatal flaw: "becoming western style consumers". From what we've seen in the last hundred years, that's strongly positively correlated with (and probably causes) decreasing birthrates. The only other broadly successful way to decrease birthrates was to make it the law, and the one country that did that has abandoned it because of the negative economic effects of too-low birthrates.

gepi79 8y ago

Keep your job if you like it or need it. What you can do: - Do not panic. A good life is important for work for improvement. - Yes to all of your suggestions. You are vegan ? Good for you and the rest of the world. - Tell other people how important and urgent change is. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw/vid... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJRjK20fHylJyf-HiBtqI2w/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJRjK20fHylJyf-HiBtqI2w/vid... https://lustysociety.org/ https://lustysociety.org/

seren 8y ago

I remember reading that blog post a few years ago : https://jancovici.com/en/climate-change/acting-individually/doing-ones-good-deed-regarding-climate-change-what-is-the-impact-of-individual-actions/ https://jancovici.com/en/climate-change/acting-individually/... It is relatively practical and takes into account the ratio cost or difficulty vs impact It boils down to using less energy for transportation or consumption (food or otherwise)

jerf 8y ago

"I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest of the time I have left." It is a grave life error to assign excessive likelihood to the doomsayers. I've been reading about inevitable doom for 25 years now. Some of what I read as a kid dated to the 60s and the guaranteed dates of inevitable doom had already passed by the time I read them in the early 90s. Even assuming they are completely 100% right about the problems, which is frankly a big assumption, they rarely, if ever, even remotely account for the fact that people and the economy change in reaction to problems. Also, consider the possibility that this feeling of hopelessness is something that perhaps somebody wants to instill in you. Why? Who benefits? Are their hands as clean as you suppose? Are you sure? I'm a big fan of "follow the money"; where most people fuck that up is that they only want to follow the money sometimes, when it suits them. Nope... always follow it. "Follow the money" is almost always used wrong; you don't need it to debunk the people you already don't trust, you need it to vet the people you do. Doomsaying has been exceedingly profitable over the past ~60 years. (It's been profitable even farther back than that, but mass market doomsaying really took off somewhere around then, which is where the real money is.) Do not forget to take that into account. (Also, as my post implies, don't assume I'm speaking just to the particular doom de jour, about which you might still have emotional reactions. I'm talking about nuclear war, population bombs, a multitude of claims we're running out of some resource, trash management issues, a wide variety of eschatological claims, all sorts of things I've read in the last 30 years. You may say "But jerf, some of those are still problems and may be problems in the future" and I say, I agree. I often like to say "Stand up. Point in a random direction. You are pointing at a problem." There are always problems and always will be problems. But we're not talking about problems... we're talking about doom. The doom has not happened. I believe fully in environmental problems both in the present and the future. I do not anywhere near fully believe in inevitable doom.)

neltnerb 8y ago
It's tricky when a preponderance of evidence and theory tells us that the lag time on the signal is several decades but human generations are also measured in decades. It doesn't matter how strong your negative feedback is if the system it's controlling is in thermal runaway by the time you apply a corrective signal. Maybe we can bandaid or mitigate the worst effects for some people. Probably richer people. But just see Harvey and wildfires and droughts for strong evidence that we will not do anything whatsoever even when cities are being destroyed by inaction.

HONEST_ANNIE 8y ago

Political action. Effective greenhouse gas taxation is a single thing that could solve the issue with the current system and be efficient. * It would have to be significantly higher than today. * It would tax exported emissions. * It would be well designed to avoid loopholes. It would include CO2 produced by food production (especially meat) and CO2 emissions from concrete.

s_kilk 8y ago

> Are there any suggestions, from a personal stand point i.e. excluding a completely new economic model and government structure? You've gone wrong at the very start. This isn't a problem that can be solved on an individual level, and the sad truth is that we do, in fact, need a new economic model. The sooner we own up to that the sooner we can move on with building it.

Comevius 8y ago

Improvise, adapt, overcome. Death is a natural part of life. Civilizations die too. It all happened before, and if we are as inventive as I think it will happen again in the distant future. So be inventive.

adrianN 8y ago

You can read through https://www.drawdown.org/solutions https://www.drawdown.org/solutions check what you can do yourself and talk to your peers and your political representatives to bring about collective action.

veebat 8y ago

Leverage. You don't throw your foe to the ground with brute force alone. You take him off-balance, and move in with good timing and technique. If your goal is solving climate change, well, the leverage isn't really in the technical solution, but in the political economy. We need a redesign. That's problem one. But if it's the power structure that needs changing, what affects it? Knowledge. Signalling. Valuation. And then you get into things that you can potentially change as a tech worker, by pushing for information systems that change our valuation metrics to match a philosophy of sustainability. And that positions actors who wish to take sustainable actions to have the leverage to realize it. That, I think, is the trick to feeling OK about it. At the end of the day, it's a war fought in an abstract, everyday sense: Build up your sense of morality and build your career around those principles. You might not be the hero, but you won't be the villain.

arglinugs 8y ago

I don't believe the CO2 levels we currently have (and are projected to have) in the atmosphere is a real threat. I don't believe the doomsday scenarios, apparently caused through cow farts and burning natural gas or from combustion engines. Energy must be expended to release CO2, and the energy is almost 0 in comparison to the energy needed to raise sea levels by say, 10 feet. We are talking millions of nuclear bombs worth of energy needed to accomplish that. There is something off with this. I don't believe the tiny amount of CO2 in our atmosphere will enable the sun to heat the planet to the doomsday levels. Predictions were made since the 80s, 90s, 00's that said our coastal cities should be literally destroyed by now... except that they aren't. There are a lot of people who stand to profit from the climate change lobby: professors, alternate energy producers, politicians, government, media. They all want money invested in THEIR pet projects. And conveniently, it serves as a great distraction from issues on the horizon that WILL have a guaranteed negative affect on your children's quality of life, but I wont get into that, since what I'm writing is divisive enough as it is. When it comes to the climate, you will be fine, we will be fine, our kids will be fine, the sky will not fall, the seas will not swallow up our cities (excluding regular weather), America will not become a desert (unless that super-volcano blows). It is sensationalism.

kerbalspacepro 8y ago
1. Carbon Dioxide stores lots of energy 2. The sun provides lots of energy 3. Therefore, carbon dioxide is able to store lots of solar energy 4. We are releasing lots of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere 5. Therefore, the atmosphere's ability to store solar energy is increasing What part of this logic don't you understand or disagree with?
- arglinugs 8y ago
  You seem to have this all figured out then, so let me ask, approximately what point beyond your retirement will all of this happen? And I say "beyond your retirement" because that is the time you will probably give me, a time you won't have to worry about anyone taking you to task on your faulty science.

ricknew 8y ago

Read Donna Haraway, "Staying With the Trouble" for one take on how we can respond.

btilly 8y ago

There still are solutions. They, however, require that the environmental movement accept large scale engineering efforts aimed at adjusting our environment. Which runs counter to their instincts. See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312505967_Olivine_Weathering_against_Climate_Change https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312505967_Olivine_W... for one approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization for another. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering lists several more.

Reason077 8y ago
"accept large scale engineering efforts aimed at adjusting our environment." While these are interesting technologies, it's very difficult to see how they make sense economically. The cost/benefit ratio is invariably much worse than simply investing in emissions reductions. If we have $X to invest in climate mitigation, it's always going to be better to spend it on technologies that reduce carbon emissions: replacing fossil-fuel power plants, electrification of transport, etc. To my knowledge there is no technology that removes a ton of carbon from the atmosphere that comes anywhere close to being competitive with what it costs to not emit that ton of carbon in the first place. Of course, the day may come when all the easy carbon reductions have been made. If the climate is still not stabilising at that point, then we can start looking at all the climate engineering mega-projects.
- btilly 8y ago
  First of all, emission reductions are not sufficient. The CO2 already emitted is enough to create a mass extinction from ocean acidification. Secondly the two techniques that I pointed to are, today, cheaper than emissions reductions. Third, the cost of other mitigations is improving over time as the price of renewable power (particularly solar) drops. So even approaches that are not currently cost-effective may be in the near future.

xapata 8y ago

Move north and develop a taste for jellyfish. Perhaps the memoirs of terminal cancer patients would be instructive. However, they benefit from frequentist statistics. We've only got Bayes for our experiment.

roryisok 8y ago

I go through cycles of being horribly depressed about the climate, and about mine and my family's future. In fact, I'm not even going to read this article because I know it'll set me off. I've learned that the only way to cope is to do everything I can personally (eat less meat, drive less, work from home, buy second hand , save energy, vote green, encourage my children and family and those around me to do the same) and then basically just get on with life and enjoy it as much as possible. If the worst happens, there's nothing we can do to prepare, not really. If some moonshot magical tech saves the day there's not much we can do to help or hinder that either. Focus on being the best person you can be, be a force for good, live life and appreciate what you have right now. Soak up fresh air and culture. If the world is consumed by fire in the next 50 years you'll be glad you did. And if it isn't, you'll still be glad.

currymj 8y ago

As far as I can tell, we are reasonably certain that the effects of climate change will be very bad. It’s hard to say exactly what will happen, though. The truly apocalyptic predictions are just not very likely. We are not going to be boiled alive or turn into Venus or whatever. It’s not going to get so hot that all plant matter catches on fire.

jellicle 8y ago
No scientist is predicting that "all plant matter will catch on fire". In fact I've never heard anyone predict that. If we do nothing, within the next 80 years large parts of the currently inhabited planet will be uninhabitable by humans, however. That's a sort of apocalypse. It's also the consensus view of scientists who study the global pollution epidemic.
- currymj 8y ago
  I would bet you and I evaluate the problem similarly, I think there are remote but plausible scenarios that are almost intolerably bad (and these become likely if we keep polluting). But there are left-leaning but not scientifically literate people who honestly believe most life on Earth is already doomed. This obviously leads to despair in their political thinking and personal lives. I’ve even heard of people contemplating suicide. I don’t think this is warranted given what we know and the uncertainties involved. Humanity still has a future worth living for even in the most frightening scenarios.

tzs 8y ago

If you are in the United States, participate in Republican primaries in support of Republican politicians who acknowledge that climate change is a problem that we cannot ignore and need to start seriously acting on. There are in fact Republican politicians who support effective measures to address climate change that are compatible with traditional Republican market-based, conservative principles, such as a revenue neutral carbon tax, but they are greatly outnumbered by the ones who think climate change is fake or is just natural cycles that will swing the other way on their own and that we cannot influence anyway.