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>I'm sorry but that sounds wildly idealistic. Kinda like "hey urribody, let's build a bunch of solar panels and wind farms, maybe build 3 or 4 nuclear plants t

>I'm sorry but that sounds wildly idealistic. Kinda like "hey urribody, let's build a bunch of solar panels and wind farms, maybe build 3 or 4 nuclear plants too and we'll save the world"? Or kinda like Y Combinator wanting to turn most of the Sahara into algal pools, where the desalination alone would use more electricity than humans currently produce, have worldwide implications on weather patterns due to the evaporation, and cause considerable impact on the health of the Amazon by drastically reducing how much dust crossed the ocean to fertilize it? http://carbon.ycombinator.com/desert-flooding/ http://carbon.ycombinator.com/desert-flooding/

triceratops 7y ago
The plans you're suggesting as too idealistic don't require the cooperation of every human being on the planet. Yours do. They also hold the chance of turning someone a profit. Yours don't. By definition, they're less idealistic than what you're proposing. They may be crazy, but definitely less idealistic. And have a higher chance of being tried out.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >The plans you're suggesting as too idealistic don't require the cooperation of every human being on the planet. Every human being on the planet is part of the problem. And yes, turning the Sahara into enough tidal pools as outlined by that Y Combinator page would be the largest project in human history, the most expensive project in human history, would require more power plants than currently exist on the planet to be constructed solely for powering the project, would create an unimaginable amount of brine that couldn't be dumped back out at sea as it would kill all of the costal life of Northern Africa, would require construction efforts in 11 countries... Solar has a very limited range of latitudes that make it effective and would require massive amounts of batteries to replace power at night/during periods of less than cooperative weather. Wind is even more limited in where it may be employed, you need consistent wind but not too much wind. Hydroelectric requires dams and flooding large swaths of land and are pretty limited to where they can actually be constructed. Writing some code that makes a process work a little more efficiently doesn't make a meaningful impact on overall power consumption. Etc etc, so on and so forth. All human beings are causing the problem (even primitive, uncontacted, tribes as they're likely generating more carbon from their fires than they are actively sequestering) so all human beings need to participate in retarding, and reversing, their greenhouse gas emissions.
  - triceratops 7y ago
    > would be the largest project in human history And it's still smaller than what you suggest. Think about that. > Writing some code that makes a process work a little more efficiently doesn't make a meaningful impact on overall power consumption. Sorry, you're saying an engineer cutting their personal meat consumption is more effective than that same engineer making entire power plants more efficient? I think they should be doing both but the latter is far more effective, for that one person to do. > all human beings need to participate Cool. Let me know if you figure out how to do that.

triceratops 7y ago

The plans you're suggesting as too idealistic don't require the cooperation of every human being on the planet. Yours do. They also hold the chance of turning someone a profit. Yours don't. By definition, they're less idealistic than what you're proposing. They may be crazy, but definitely less idealistic. And have a higher chance of being tried out.

ryanmercer 7y ago
>The plans you're suggesting as too idealistic don't require the cooperation of every human being on the planet. Every human being on the planet is part of the problem. And yes, turning the Sahara into enough tidal pools as outlined by that Y Combinator page would be the largest project in human history, the most expensive project in human history, would require more power plants than currently exist on the planet to be constructed solely for powering the project, would create an unimaginable amount of brine that couldn't be dumped back out at sea as it would kill all of the costal life of Northern Africa, would require construction efforts in 11 countries... Solar has a very limited range of latitudes that make it effective and would require massive amounts of batteries to replace power at night/during periods of less than cooperative weather. Wind is even more limited in where it may be employed, you need consistent wind but not too much wind. Hydroelectric requires dams and flooding large swaths of land and are pretty limited to where they can actually be constructed. Writing some code that makes a process work a little more efficiently doesn't make a meaningful impact on overall power consumption. Etc etc, so on and so forth. All human beings are causing the problem (even primitive, uncontacted, tribes as they're likely generating more carbon from their fires than they are actively sequestering) so all human beings need to participate in retarding, and reversing, their greenhouse gas emissions.
- triceratops 7y ago
  > would be the largest project in human history And it's still smaller than what you suggest. Think about that. > Writing some code that makes a process work a little more efficiently doesn't make a meaningful impact on overall power consumption. Sorry, you're saying an engineer cutting their personal meat consumption is more effective than that same engineer making entire power plants more efficient? I think they should be doing both but the latter is far more effective, for that one person to do. > all human beings need to participate Cool. Let me know if you figure out how to do that.