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It’s because if people were actually serious, they’d either stop using 90% of the power they use or be investing heavily in nuclear power, both making it cheape

It’s because if people were actually serious, they’d either stop using 90% of the power they use or be investing heavily in nuclear power, both making it cheaper and safer. There’s no short or mid term solutions for large scale batteries that will make renewables a viable alternative. But if we’d started moving from coal to nuclear when this crisis first was understood, it’d already be over.

ryanmercer 7y ago
It's not simply people being serious. The world has billions of people that don't know the first thing about climate change or the dangers of global warming. There are billions of people that simply do not know how much greenhouse gasses are produced as a byproduct of their daily choices in life, or what the consequences are. Even talking to some incredibly wealthy people that want to try and solve this, you quickly realize they just do not understand. Take YC, YC came out with the page I linked in my previous comment last year yet they continue to fly founders out for in-person 10-minute interviews when they could do it via skype. One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or to San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person, a 10-minute skype chat would be insanely less as 1GB of data transfer is roughly 1kg of CO2. YC knows carbon is an issue but then prefers in-person interviews for 'finalist' startups as they've stated it works better than video for their needs and this goes for many other companies, individuals, agencies, governments etc. People are like 'yeah, I drink free trade coffee, I recycle, I ride share to save the environment' then you pull up their dating profile and/or social media accounts and here they are in one photo with penguins, three photos later they are in a jungle with an elephant, 2 photos later they're on a ski slope with a caption "3rd country this year, 17 total!"... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The problem is, people aren't going to care until it is already too late (which is in the next 5-10 years if we don't drastically change). When multiple seasons of crop failures drive up food prices, when heat waves kill millions, when droughts and water shortages start affecting millions, when flooding seriously hurts crops... Wait, Australia was about 20% light on grains last year. Most of the midwest has had insane rains this year which is directly impacting crop planting. Cities in India are literally running out of water. Heat waves in France are threatening to shut down a nuclear reactor as cooling water runs out. Oh. It's already happening. Most people don't know and don't care. :/
- smhenderson 7y ago
  I know and I care but short of looking at myself and my family and implementing better life style practices that we may or not be able to afford what do I do? I vote and I know the biggest impact has to come from world governments but even voting seems like a small, hollow step that does nothing in the short run to help the situation. What else can one person do to make a difference?
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    There's a lot an individual can do to minimize their own impact (but sadly, unless we get a significant percentage of the population to change, it isn't going to matter much). Here are a few off the top of my head: - Give up meat. If you don't want to give up meat, chicken = far less greenhouse gasses than beef per measure of meat (Beef requires "around 28 times more land than the other options, 11 times more water and resulted in 5 times more greenhouse gas emissions" https://www.iflscience.com/environment/new-study-says-beef-10x-more-damaging-environment-chicken-pork-or-dairy-foods/ https://www.iflscience.com/environment/new-study-says-beef-1... ). - Try and buy local - Try and buy with minimal packaging, buying bulk can help a lot with this. 50lb bag of rice instead of 1lb, 10lb bag of beans instead of 1lb, etc. - Find fun things to do locally instead of deciding you just HAVE to fly to Antarctica to see the penguins because your buddy Greg and his girlfriend did. - Turn off lights when you aren't in a room, unplug stuff with phantom loads when you aren't using it, when appliances die replace with energy efficient models - Make fewer trips to the store, don't order something on Amazon every day or multiple times a day as it is going to increase the chances you'll be getting multiple packages from multiple delivers and try and limit yourself to once a week or better - never. - Instead of going to see the 376th Avengers film in the cavernous air conditioned theater with Dolby THX Rumble Bumble Ultra Eardrum-rupture Super Sound TM, watch it at home. ("figure out the energy costs, let's reference a 2011 Slate article that compares the energy costs of watching a DVD at home versus going to the theater.6 The technology at commercial cinemas eats up lots more energy than your puny flat screen. The precise amount can vary by projection bulb and by how brightly the cinema chooses to screen the film. Usually, it falls between 3.1 and 10.5 kilowatts. A typical machine projecting at a medium brightness for the running time of Green Lantern would consume about 9.6 kWh." https://business.directenergy.com/blog/2018/february/how-much-energy-does-it-take-to-fuel-valentines-day https://business.directenergy.com/blog/2018/february/how-muc... then of course factor in driving all of those speakers, the air conditioning/heating for that cavernous room etc) - Waste less, "food loss at the retail and consumer levels, corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010" https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs.

ryanmercer 7y ago

It's not simply people being serious. The world has billions of people that don't know the first thing about climate change or the dangers of global warming. There are billions of people that simply do not know how much greenhouse gasses are produced as a byproduct of their daily choices in life, or what the consequences are. Even talking to some incredibly wealthy people that want to try and solve this, you quickly realize they just do not understand. Take YC, YC came out with the page I linked in my previous comment last year yet they continue to fly founders out for in-person 10-minute interviews when they could do it via skype. One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or to San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person, a 10-minute skype chat would be insanely less as 1GB of data transfer is roughly 1kg of CO2. YC knows carbon is an issue but then prefers in-person interviews for 'finalist' startups as they've stated it works better than video for their needs and this goes for many other companies, individuals, agencies, governments etc. People are like 'yeah, I drink free trade coffee, I recycle, I ride share to save the environment' then you pull up their dating profile and/or social media accounts and here they are in one photo with penguins, three photos later they are in a jungle with an elephant, 2 photos later they're on a ski slope with a caption "3rd country this year, 17 total!"... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The problem is, people aren't going to care until it is already too late (which is in the next 5-10 years if we don't drastically change). When multiple seasons of crop failures drive up food prices, when heat waves kill millions, when droughts and water shortages start affecting millions, when flooding seriously hurts crops... Wait, Australia was about 20% light on grains last year. Most of the midwest has had insane rains this year which is directly impacting crop planting. Cities in India are literally running out of water. Heat waves in France are threatening to shut down a nuclear reactor as cooling water runs out. Oh. It's already happening. Most people don't know and don't care. :/

smhenderson 7y ago
I know and I care but short of looking at myself and my family and implementing better life style practices that we may or not be able to afford what do I do? I vote and I know the biggest impact has to come from world governments but even voting seems like a small, hollow step that does nothing in the short run to help the situation. What else can one person do to make a difference?
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  There's a lot an individual can do to minimize their own impact (but sadly, unless we get a significant percentage of the population to change, it isn't going to matter much). Here are a few off the top of my head: - Give up meat. If you don't want to give up meat, chicken = far less greenhouse gasses than beef per measure of meat (Beef requires "around 28 times more land than the other options, 11 times more water and resulted in 5 times more greenhouse gas emissions" https://www.iflscience.com/environment/new-study-says-beef-10x-more-damaging-environment-chicken-pork-or-dairy-foods/ https://www.iflscience.com/environment/new-study-says-beef-1... ). - Try and buy local - Try and buy with minimal packaging, buying bulk can help a lot with this. 50lb bag of rice instead of 1lb, 10lb bag of beans instead of 1lb, etc. - Find fun things to do locally instead of deciding you just HAVE to fly to Antarctica to see the penguins because your buddy Greg and his girlfriend did. - Turn off lights when you aren't in a room, unplug stuff with phantom loads when you aren't using it, when appliances die replace with energy efficient models - Make fewer trips to the store, don't order something on Amazon every day or multiple times a day as it is going to increase the chances you'll be getting multiple packages from multiple delivers and try and limit yourself to once a week or better - never. - Instead of going to see the 376th Avengers film in the cavernous air conditioned theater with Dolby THX Rumble Bumble Ultra Eardrum-rupture Super Sound TM, watch it at home. ("figure out the energy costs, let's reference a 2011 Slate article that compares the energy costs of watching a DVD at home versus going to the theater.6 The technology at commercial cinemas eats up lots more energy than your puny flat screen. The precise amount can vary by projection bulb and by how brightly the cinema chooses to screen the film. Usually, it falls between 3.1 and 10.5 kilowatts. A typical machine projecting at a medium brightness for the running time of Green Lantern would consume about 9.6 kWh." https://business.directenergy.com/blog/2018/february/how-much-energy-does-it-take-to-fuel-valentines-day https://business.directenergy.com/blog/2018/february/how-muc... then of course factor in driving all of those speakers, the air conditioning/heating for that cavernous room etc) - Waste less, "food loss at the retail and consumer levels, corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010" https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs.