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This question pops up quite regularly on HN. I am always giving the same answer. We, HN crowd, presented with a problem tend to reach for a technical solution.

This question pops up quite regularly on HN. I am always giving the same answer. We, HN crowd, presented with a problem tend to reach for a technical solution. Unfortunately, climate change is not an engineering problem, it's a political problem. IT will not solve it. The best we, as engineers, can do is the same as for anyone else - step out of our comport zone and join a climate movement. Extinction Rebellion is my favorite. You can choose your own poison.

konjin 6y ago
We already have the solution: nuclear power. The rest is the political problem of the anti-science attitude of one party in the US being spread to the rest of the world.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  What is the latest development on nuclear power? I tried to read about these recently, but maybe can you point me in the right direction?
  - konjin 6y ago
    Small reactors, they remove the main problem with nuclear power: huge reactors that no western country knows how to build any more. The largest projects we can build today are the size of a large office building. Anything bigger will be over budget and time.
    - christiansakai 6y ago
      What about safety and nuclear waste?
      - ben_w 6y ago
        While I am also concerned about safety (there’s always something that can go wrong, and the energy density and the conversion factor from energy to risk are both very hazardous here), the waste is a surprisingly small issue: The actual quantity of material, thanks to the energy density of the fuel, is tiny and easily managed.
        christiansakai 6y ago
        Interesting. How about the supply of the Uranium. As far as I know it is not renewable?
        ben_w 6y ago
        It’s not renewable, no. Exactly how much uranium is economical to extract isn’t clear, even before the last decade of tech development caused renewables to reduce to about 1/10th the price of nuclear. My opinion is: keep any current reactors running while they’re in decent condition, but don’t bother trying to plan new reactors for electricity because PV is faster and cheaper to deploy even if you have to add LiIon batteries. (I’d be fine with making new reactors for big new cargo ships, but I believe someone tried something like that already and it didn’t work out).
- pjc50 6y ago
  No, it's the result of traditional reactors being inextricably linked to nuclear weapons proliferation, and the huge cloud of fallout across Europe in the early 80s. Would you be happy for Iran to build a fleet of dozens of nuclear reactors to replace its current fossil fuel consumption? The massive cost and time overruns don't help its case. When is Hinkley Point C going to be finished?
ovi256 6y ago
> is not an engineering problem, it's a political problem That's a political choice, and it doesn't have to be that way. You think it's a hard political problem because we'd have to make very hard choices (reducing quality of life) with the currently deployed technical solutions. We could push along the R&D levels tech that's already researched, just not deployed (renewables and storage for their intermittent production like li-ion utility scale batteries), and research more some stuff that's barely researched (next gen nuclear, fusion). Having palatable tech solutions would mean not making unpalatable political choices.
- onion2k 6y ago
  Having palatable tech solutions would mean not making unpalatable political choices. The only answer is to tackle the issue from both a technological point of view and a political one. Waiting for someone to find a tech solution, and then failing to find one, will make things so much worse.
kitkat_new 6y ago
Climate change requires also a few technical problems to be solved. Jobs in the IT area are usually included in the chain. Though, I also think joining a climate movement is very important.
superbcarrot 6y ago
I think that you're leaving out economic factors - when better and cleaner technology becomes cheaper than the alternatives, politics becomes largely irrelevant. And to get to that point economically, you need technological innovation.
- adrianN 6y ago
  That's a lot harder to do when fossil fuels benefit from massive subsidies.
- hannob 6y ago
  Not gonna happen. This is a popular idea, I think people are a bit deluded by the fact that Wind+Solar got so cheap. Don't get me wrong: This is great. We'll likely be able to get rid of fossil-based electricity simply due to costs (even though it's too slow). But it's simply not plausible that you will find a cheaper technology in every area. Finding a way to fly a plane without carbon emissions is a challenge to begin with. Doing it cheaper than with kerosene - there isn't even a faint of an idea how to do that. In some areas like cement the only option seems to be carbon capture and storage. There's no way whatsoever that a cement plant + a ccs plant is cheaper than a cement plant alone.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    It doesn't need to happen in every area. It just needs to happen in enough areas that the carbon output is brought below a threshold that the environment can safely absorb. Sure, maybe you can't make efficient electric planes. But maybe you can replace 90% of short range flights with trains and make electric planes unnecessary.
    - hannob 6y ago
      > It doesn't need to happen in every area. It just needs to happen in enough areas that the carbon output is brought below a threshold that the environment can safely absorb. That is actually a misconception. There is no such threshold, at least not for carbon dioxide (it's a bit more complicated for methane and some other greenhouse gases). It accumulates in the atmosphere. There is some uptake of co2 by natural processes, but that's roughly relative to the amount you put in. If you put in more co2 the concentration of co2 in the atmosphere will keep growing.
DennisP 6y ago
It's not like political organizations don't use IT. They have websites and databases. More generally, political solutions are important but technical solutions are necessary too. Bill Gates' new book goes into this in detail, with the concept of a "green premium," the percentage cost increase of going with a carbon-neutral solution in place of whatever we're using now. In some areas of the economy, the premium is quite large, and finding new tech to shrink it would help a lot. Technical solutions won't make many green solutions cheaper than fossil in the foreseeable future, so we still need politics, but making the expensive stuff more reasonable makes the political task easier.
TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
Climate change will require a combination of technological advancement, policy change, and market incentives and alignment for it to be fully change. We need to make green energy cheaper to use than other forms of energy.
iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago
I would argue the opposite, that its mainly a technical problem that has been coopted by a political movement. The technical problem should be (roughly), how can we continue to enjoy our lives and the standard of living we have achieved, and continue to bring more of the world to that level, in a way that is sustainable long term. There are lots of promising routes to making this happen, and we have already seen lots of progress towards reducing environmental impact. But there are people that want to move backwards, to reduce our standard of living, to reduce our freedom to make our own choices, and to enforce some kind of forced mediocrity that will help ration our natural resources. I reject this (and weaker versions of it) and believe there is more to be gained by focusing on progress than on telling people what to do.
- abyssin 6y ago
  This is the best summary of why we're so well headed to a catastrophe. It seems that be definition, you won't accept any reduction of your standard of living. What if there's no way around it? Your standard of living relies on exploiting amounts of energy equivalent to several hundred slaves per person. That amount of energy can't be found in renewable sources only. How much of a slave master am I? https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/how-much-of-a-slave-master-am-i/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/how...
  - m_mueller 6y ago
    > That amount of energy can't be found in renewable sources only. 1.) overall humanity is still very inefficient at extracting productivity & comfort from energy. e.g. there is no inherent reason why buildings should need any energy flow to stay at a comfortable temperature. GP did not argue against reducing energy needs but against trying to make people reduce their quality of life. 2.) even at the current consumption I'm not so sure that 10Bn people could not be sustained. there's a hell of a lot of energy incident by the sun, it's just a matter of storing it where we have scaling issues. a whole bunch of battery tech ideas could help with that. Overall I don't think we're that far from mass producing net energy positive houses (solar roof + industrial battery + near perfect isolation through e.g. low pressure zone in a double wall system). Inhabitants could either sell their energy on the market or use it for their transport needs.
Geee 6y ago
It's very much a technical issue. The scale of energy utilization is one of the defining characteristics of how technologically advanced a civilization is. The total power output of the sun is 3.8 x 10^26 watts and our total power consumption is about 1.5 x 10^13 watts, which is about 0.000000000004% of sun's power output. As a civilization, we're still very undeveloped, almost non-existent.
- vsareto 6y ago
  Imagine designing an IT system for a dyson sphere when we can't even get websites consistent though
NoOneNew 6y ago
Eh, I somewhat agree, but when it comes to engineering, there are more engineering fields than software. Civil engineers, for example, are one of the top 3 (my opinion obviously) of disciplines that can have a significant good impact on the environment. Bio, chem and even mechanical engineers can have a good sized impact as well. Software engineers... yea, not so much. For example, when it came to the ozone layer, it was chemical engineers that led to alternatives to the aerosols of the time that allowed the Montreal pact to even be feasible. The ozone is still on track for full healing in 2060 because of that. I just think tech folks in general have a hubris problem. To "solve poverty and gov control on currency", 37 megatons of extra co2 gets pumped in the air: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption. Let alone all the companies claiming to make the world a better place by harvesting private data and controlling what content the public is allowed to see or agree with. It's a shame because mechanical and electronic engineers developed light bulbs (LED) that used a quarter of the power compared to traditional (incandescent). It's also mechanical engineers that are developing better renewable energy generation. So yes, engineers can help the environment. Most here are just the wrong kind of engineer that can actually do more than hold a glittery poster board saying, "I'm upset". I switched out of dev to work in the concrete industry so I can do my part in cutting unnecessary co2 emissions.
lordnacho 6y ago
All problems are engineering problems. In this case we haven't engineered a culture with enough people of engineering mindset at the top. To say that something is a political problem is an empty statement, it attempts to pass the buck. Politics is decision making, as is coding. If we had decision makers who understood things like how the natural world works, we would have fewer problems with it. I am even allowing a very broad definition of what engineering is: understand some dynamic well enough to intervene in it.
ironmagma 6y ago
It’s a very big problem, in that it touches a lot of different sectors. One of those sectors is tech. There can be technical solutions to climate change; they are in the category “necessary but not sufficient.” There must ALSO be business and political solutions, but reducing wasted ocean traffic by 20%, for example, could have huge consequences.
troyvit 6y ago
I don't think this is an answer to their question though. They didn't ask your opinion what the problem is, or even how to solve it, but rather what companies are trying to do it. I'll add that there are plenty of organizations that aren't looking for a technical solution but still need technical people.
marakv2 6y ago
I disagree, partially. We, (and I mean you guys as I'm an amateur here), can help build tools to inform and help spread information. Parse information in a way which helps people fighting climate change is helpful.

konjin 6y ago

We already have the solution: nuclear power. The rest is the political problem of the anti-science attitude of one party in the US being spread to the rest of the world.

christiansakai 6y ago
What is the latest development on nuclear power? I tried to read about these recently, but maybe can you point me in the right direction?
- konjin 6y ago
  Small reactors, they remove the main problem with nuclear power: huge reactors that no western country knows how to build any more. The largest projects we can build today are the size of a large office building. Anything bigger will be over budget and time.
  - christiansakai 6y ago
    What about safety and nuclear waste?
    - ben_w 6y ago
      While I am also concerned about safety (there’s always something that can go wrong, and the energy density and the conversion factor from energy to risk are both very hazardous here), the waste is a surprisingly small issue: The actual quantity of material, thanks to the energy density of the fuel, is tiny and easily managed.
      - christiansakai 6y ago
        Interesting. How about the supply of the Uranium. As far as I know it is not renewable?
        ben_w 6y ago
        It’s not renewable, no. Exactly how much uranium is economical to extract isn’t clear, even before the last decade of tech development caused renewables to reduce to about 1/10th the price of nuclear. My opinion is: keep any current reactors running while they’re in decent condition, but don’t bother trying to plan new reactors for electricity because PV is faster and cheaper to deploy even if you have to add LiIon batteries. (I’d be fine with making new reactors for big new cargo ships, but I believe someone tried something like that already and it didn’t work out).
pjc50 6y ago
No, it's the result of traditional reactors being inextricably linked to nuclear weapons proliferation, and the huge cloud of fallout across Europe in the early 80s. Would you be happy for Iran to build a fleet of dozens of nuclear reactors to replace its current fossil fuel consumption? The massive cost and time overruns don't help its case. When is Hinkley Point C going to be finished?

ovi256 6y ago

> is not an engineering problem, it's a political problem That's a political choice, and it doesn't have to be that way. You think it's a hard political problem because we'd have to make very hard choices (reducing quality of life) with the currently deployed technical solutions. We could push along the R&D levels tech that's already researched, just not deployed (renewables and storage for their intermittent production like li-ion utility scale batteries), and research more some stuff that's barely researched (next gen nuclear, fusion). Having palatable tech solutions would mean not making unpalatable political choices.

onion2k 6y ago
Having palatable tech solutions would mean not making unpalatable political choices. The only answer is to tackle the issue from both a technological point of view and a political one. Waiting for someone to find a tech solution, and then failing to find one, will make things so much worse.

kitkat_new 6y ago

Climate change requires also a few technical problems to be solved. Jobs in the IT area are usually included in the chain. Though, I also think joining a climate movement is very important.

superbcarrot 6y ago

I think that you're leaving out economic factors - when better and cleaner technology becomes cheaper than the alternatives, politics becomes largely irrelevant. And to get to that point economically, you need technological innovation.

adrianN 6y ago
That's a lot harder to do when fossil fuels benefit from massive subsidies.
hannob 6y ago
Not gonna happen. This is a popular idea, I think people are a bit deluded by the fact that Wind+Solar got so cheap. Don't get me wrong: This is great. We'll likely be able to get rid of fossil-based electricity simply due to costs (even though it's too slow). But it's simply not plausible that you will find a cheaper technology in every area. Finding a way to fly a plane without carbon emissions is a challenge to begin with. Doing it cheaper than with kerosene - there isn't even a faint of an idea how to do that. In some areas like cement the only option seems to be carbon capture and storage. There's no way whatsoever that a cement plant + a ccs plant is cheaper than a cement plant alone.
- imgabe 6y ago
  It doesn't need to happen in every area. It just needs to happen in enough areas that the carbon output is brought below a threshold that the environment can safely absorb. Sure, maybe you can't make efficient electric planes. But maybe you can replace 90% of short range flights with trains and make electric planes unnecessary.
  - hannob 6y ago
    > It doesn't need to happen in every area. It just needs to happen in enough areas that the carbon output is brought below a threshold that the environment can safely absorb. That is actually a misconception. There is no such threshold, at least not for carbon dioxide (it's a bit more complicated for methane and some other greenhouse gases). It accumulates in the atmosphere. There is some uptake of co2 by natural processes, but that's roughly relative to the amount you put in. If you put in more co2 the concentration of co2 in the atmosphere will keep growing.

DennisP 6y ago

It's not like political organizations don't use IT. They have websites and databases. More generally, political solutions are important but technical solutions are necessary too. Bill Gates' new book goes into this in detail, with the concept of a "green premium," the percentage cost increase of going with a carbon-neutral solution in place of whatever we're using now. In some areas of the economy, the premium is quite large, and finding new tech to shrink it would help a lot. Technical solutions won't make many green solutions cheaper than fossil in the foreseeable future, so we still need politics, but making the expensive stuff more reasonable makes the political task easier.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago

Climate change will require a combination of technological advancement, policy change, and market incentives and alignment for it to be fully change. We need to make green energy cheaper to use than other forms of energy.

iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago

I would argue the opposite, that its mainly a technical problem that has been coopted by a political movement. The technical problem should be (roughly), how can we continue to enjoy our lives and the standard of living we have achieved, and continue to bring more of the world to that level, in a way that is sustainable long term. There are lots of promising routes to making this happen, and we have already seen lots of progress towards reducing environmental impact. But there are people that want to move backwards, to reduce our standard of living, to reduce our freedom to make our own choices, and to enforce some kind of forced mediocrity that will help ration our natural resources. I reject this (and weaker versions of it) and believe there is more to be gained by focusing on progress than on telling people what to do.

abyssin 6y ago
This is the best summary of why we're so well headed to a catastrophe. It seems that be definition, you won't accept any reduction of your standard of living. What if there's no way around it? Your standard of living relies on exploiting amounts of energy equivalent to several hundred slaves per person. That amount of energy can't be found in renewable sources only. How much of a slave master am I? https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/how-much-of-a-slave-master-am-i/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/how...
- m_mueller 6y ago
  > That amount of energy can't be found in renewable sources only. 1.) overall humanity is still very inefficient at extracting productivity & comfort from energy. e.g. there is no inherent reason why buildings should need any energy flow to stay at a comfortable temperature. GP did not argue against reducing energy needs but against trying to make people reduce their quality of life. 2.) even at the current consumption I'm not so sure that 10Bn people could not be sustained. there's a hell of a lot of energy incident by the sun, it's just a matter of storing it where we have scaling issues. a whole bunch of battery tech ideas could help with that. Overall I don't think we're that far from mass producing net energy positive houses (solar roof + industrial battery + near perfect isolation through e.g. low pressure zone in a double wall system). Inhabitants could either sell their energy on the market or use it for their transport needs.

Geee 6y ago

It's very much a technical issue. The scale of energy utilization is one of the defining characteristics of how technologically advanced a civilization is. The total power output of the sun is 3.8 x 10^26 watts and our total power consumption is about 1.5 x 10^13 watts, which is about 0.000000000004% of sun's power output. As a civilization, we're still very undeveloped, almost non-existent.

vsareto 6y ago
Imagine designing an IT system for a dyson sphere when we can't even get websites consistent though

NoOneNew 6y ago

Eh, I somewhat agree, but when it comes to engineering, there are more engineering fields than software. Civil engineers, for example, are one of the top 3 (my opinion obviously) of disciplines that can have a significant good impact on the environment. Bio, chem and even mechanical engineers can have a good sized impact as well. Software engineers... yea, not so much. For example, when it came to the ozone layer, it was chemical engineers that led to alternatives to the aerosols of the time that allowed the Montreal pact to even be feasible. The ozone is still on track for full healing in 2060 because of that. I just think tech folks in general have a hubris problem. To "solve poverty and gov control on currency", 37 megatons of extra co2 gets pumped in the air: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption. Let alone all the companies claiming to make the world a better place by harvesting private data and controlling what content the public is allowed to see or agree with. It's a shame because mechanical and electronic engineers developed light bulbs (LED) that used a quarter of the power compared to traditional (incandescent). It's also mechanical engineers that are developing better renewable energy generation. So yes, engineers can help the environment. Most here are just the wrong kind of engineer that can actually do more than hold a glittery poster board saying, "I'm upset". I switched out of dev to work in the concrete industry so I can do my part in cutting unnecessary co2 emissions.

lordnacho 6y ago

All problems are engineering problems. In this case we haven't engineered a culture with enough people of engineering mindset at the top. To say that something is a political problem is an empty statement, it attempts to pass the buck. Politics is decision making, as is coding. If we had decision makers who understood things like how the natural world works, we would have fewer problems with it. I am even allowing a very broad definition of what engineering is: understand some dynamic well enough to intervene in it.

ironmagma 6y ago

It’s a very big problem, in that it touches a lot of different sectors. One of those sectors is tech. There can be technical solutions to climate change; they are in the category “necessary but not sufficient.” There must ALSO be business and political solutions, but reducing wasted ocean traffic by 20%, for example, could have huge consequences.

troyvit 6y ago

I don't think this is an answer to their question though. They didn't ask your opinion what the problem is, or even how to solve it, but rather what companies are trying to do it. I'll add that there are plenty of organizations that aren't looking for a technical solution but still need technical people.

marakv2 6y ago

I disagree, partially. We, (and I mean you guys as I'm an amateur here), can help build tools to inform and help spread information. Parse information in a way which helps people fighting climate change is helpful.