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What are you even arguing? People posting here need to made less ambiguous, seething comments and stop assuming that people reading already know what they’re ar

What are you even arguing? People posting here need to made less ambiguous, seething comments and stop assuming that people reading already know what they’re arguing. - The poster above mentions desalination and says tech provides a solution. - You make some vague point about tech people depending too much on tech, but without actually discussing the point and why. - Then you go on to talk about the current problem, which the commenter above proposed a solution to, but making it sound as though you’re disagreeing with them. So what are you even saying??

wildmanx 4y ago
We humans have a terrible track record when it comes to using tech to try to counter environmental issues that we caused. It has essentially never worked. What _can_ work is to use tech to address the root cause, which in many cases resource overuse, just like this one. That is, using tech to reduce the use of that resource. Trying to replenish the resource while not curbing its use is doomed to failure.
- surfpel 4y ago
  > We humans have a terrible track record when it comes to using tech to try to counter environmental issues that we caused. That’s a potentially valid criticism but it’s also a heuristic that, even if a valid one, draws on a very short history of generating solutions to man made environmental disasters. Things generally don’t work until they do, and there’s no inherent reason that humans can’t do well here. > It has essentially never worked. A large part of the reason for those failures was that up until recently, science was very dismissive of nuance in environmental systems, but now there’s certainly an abundance of caution, to the point where environmental engineering as a solution to climate change is heavily frowned upon, which is good. I think desalination has more potential than just as to replace current water consumption, it even has the potential to make water an abundant resource, which is a very exciting prospect. All of this should be approached with highly cautious and critical optimism however, since there isn’t a miracle solution to anything and it’s improbable that we’d stamp out all the possible consequences right off the bat.

wildmanx 4y ago

We humans have a terrible track record when it comes to using tech to try to counter environmental issues that we caused. It has essentially never worked. What _can_ work is to use tech to address the root cause, which in many cases resource overuse, just like this one. That is, using tech to reduce the use of that resource. Trying to replenish the resource while not curbing its use is doomed to failure.

surfpel 4y ago
> We humans have a terrible track record when it comes to using tech to try to counter environmental issues that we caused. That’s a potentially valid criticism but it’s also a heuristic that, even if a valid one, draws on a very short history of generating solutions to man made environmental disasters. Things generally don’t work until they do, and there’s no inherent reason that humans can’t do well here. > It has essentially never worked. A large part of the reason for those failures was that up until recently, science was very dismissive of nuance in environmental systems, but now there’s certainly an abundance of caution, to the point where environmental engineering as a solution to climate change is heavily frowned upon, which is good. I think desalination has more potential than just as to replace current water consumption, it even has the potential to make water an abundant resource, which is a very exciting prospect. All of this should be approached with highly cautious and critical optimism however, since there isn’t a miracle solution to anything and it’s improbable that we’d stamp out all the possible consequences right off the bat.