9 ms·
To Save the Climate, Look to the Oceans
- 4636760295 6y agoBoomers don't care about our future, so I don't think anything is going to change in the near term until either a) we start seeing significant natural disasters or b) the boomers start dying out and lose control of the government or c) there's a full-on uprising.
- stx 6y agoIts not just boomers. I think we should look at people individually and not just generalize a whole group of people.
- 4636760295 6y agoIt's mostly boomers. Maybe "not all boomers" in the same way "not all cops are bad", but it's mostly boomers. It's okay to recognize the problem, acknowledge it, and tackle it head on.
- pestaa 6y agoIndividual actions are generally justifiable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
- lcam84 6y agoThe tragedy of tragedy the commons is that it is not based on evidence. Elinor Ostron won the nobel prize by proving that the commons are sustainable most of the time. Things only become unsustainable when those who exploit the land have no physical relationship with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom.
- gamblor956 6y agoNo, she proved that the commons are sustainable only when those exploiting the land have a physical proximity and relationship to the land. Her research was entirely focused on small local communities organized around the exploitation of a specific natural resource (i.e., fishing village in Maine, forest village in Nepal). In all other cases, the tragedy of the commons applied.
- lcam84 6y agoShe has proved that it is not the form of management that causes environmental problems, but rather large-scale exploitation. In doing so, she has discredited the hypothesis of the tragedy of the commons, which was never based on evidence. Many private industry owners do not even step on the ground they are exploiting. Why the tragedy of the commons gain so many traction?
- stx 6y agoSo how does this make it okay to generalize a whole generation as one point of view?
- 4636760295 6y agoThat's what the data shows.
- makotech222 6y agoBoomerism is a mindset, not an age, and it is most definitely being propagated with billions of dollars
- austincheney 6y agoThat strikes me as rather short-sided and not based on science.
- 4636760295 6y agoBoomers have never cared about science, they only care about their retirement accounts.
- aphextron 6y agoGiven that A and C are already happening with zero effect, I think that leaves B as the only way we start to see any change.
- 4636760295 6y agoC isn't happening yet, and congress is still about 2/3rd boomers. I don't think A is significant enough to affect retirement accounts, so it's not something boomers are passionate about.
- haram_masala 6y agoSorry to meta-comment, but I think this really isn't in the spirit of the kind of discussion we try to maintain on HN. It is also demonstrably false and not even a good generalization.
- 4636760295 6y agoYou can silence us, but that doesn't make us disappear.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoIt keeps the community healthy though, and you still get to consume high signal content.
- 4636760295 6y agoI think the time for sitting around singing kumbaya has passed. It's time to start acting, because if we don't this planet is fucked.
- jamil7 6y agoSo get involved in something. Demonstrate, join a local activist group, volunteer, vote, change your lifestyle drastically. Pointing fingers over the internet isn't helpful.
- 4636760295 6y agoDisagree, it's important to start changing the dialogue everywhere you can. HN likes to stick their head in the sand because a lot of the people on this site benefit directly from companies/investors who are part of the problem.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dang 6y agoWhat you did in this thread was egregious and we've banned this account. Please do not create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jakozaur 6y agoIt omits one of the very promising, but somewhat controversial methods of CO2 sequestration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization Even in the most optimistic CO2 reduction scenarios, we still need negative emissions that will offset existing CO2 or use-case where eliminating fossil fuels is not practical (e.g. airplanes).
- haram_masala 6y agoI've read somewhere that this method is a non-starter, because the methane it produces more than offsets the carbon it sequesters. I'd love to be wrong, of course.
- Valgrim 6y agoWhales play a crucial part in natural iron fertilization of oceans, because they go deep underwater to eat a large amount of krill, which are iron-rich, and deject near the surface, because they need to breathe. Their dejections fertilize the phytoplankton which lives near the surface. Because they need to move between deep and shallow water, and because they travel over large distances, whales act as nutrient pumps for the ecosystem.
- godelski 6y ago> Even in the most optimistic CO2 reduction scenarios, we still need negative emissions I think this is something a lot of people miss and I'm not sure why sequestration as a whole is a controversial subject (well I don't think planting more trees is _that_ controversial, though there are nuances people aren't usually aware of). We don't just need to be carbon neutral, we need to be negative. Plus there are many industries that we have no neutral method, such as concrete and steel production. Most people think if we solve energy and transportation we solve the problem instead of only solving 60% of the problem. The other important factor here is that emissions are the problem. If coal plants sequester 110% of their emissions, there's no problem (well... in terms of CO2eq). The fact that this is a controversial subject is odd to me because it seems like the fastest way to get carbon negative. Sequester coal and natural gas plants until we can switch to a fully green (or green + nuclear, depending on your country's/region's constraints) system. But if we talk about energy + transportation only being 60% of the issue (and US + Europe only being 30% of global emissions) it becomes much more important to talk about getting to NEGATIVE emissions, not zero (plus this helps with the 40 year lag of CO2 and temperature). And for those saying that other countries should take up their share 1) do you want to make that bet? You've all worked on team projects. We can't force them. 2) How do you ask a developing country to choose between hospitals and green energy? They don't have enough for both and one clearly has a shorter return on investment in number of human lives saved. (We can pick on China though, they're rich enough that they don't have to choose, but US and Europe need to be picked on as well).
- austincheney 6y agoThe article mentions power by wave energy. I could not tell from the article if this is real or hypothetical. It sounds like a good idea but I have not heard anything about this. That is a constant source of naturally occurring kinetic energy. I did find the following on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power As a Texan I heard a lot about potentially tapping wind energy from floating turbines off the Galveston coast but have not heard about this in practice while the wind farms in west Texas are exploding in volume. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas
- huhnmonster 6y agoThere are converters at coast lines that are reality and being tested/used.[0] There are plans to install converters at the bottom of the sea to collect wave energy, but if my memory serves correct, there were concerns that this would slow down processes in the ocean and might lead to problems in its ecosystem. [0]: https://www.marinetechnologynews.com/blogs/wave-energy-research-in-brazil-taking-off-700004 https://www.marinetechnologynews.com/blogs/wave-energy-resea...
- pjc50 6y agoWave power has been a pipedream since the 1970s; the problem is that water is too powerful and tends to destroy structures over time. As well as being corrosive and full of living things that cause "fouling". It's also not been very well funded. Offshore wind turbines on the other hand are practically a mature technology, while getting larger and larger over time (improves efficiency). There's loads around the UK, although mostly fixed rather than floating. Floating is a less mature technology.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoPerhaps it would work better in estuaries, with clean(er) river/fresh water. The ecological impact may be prohibitive, but as an engineering task it seems easier.
- 6y ago