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A Young Architect’s Designs for the Climate Apocalypse
- tpmx 3y ago[flagged]
- beachy 3y agoPeople aren't going to die within a decade. That is hyperbole. Our planet and the natural world are facing their biggest threat in millennia. Not hyperbole.
- dwater 3y agoAll people are not likely to die within a decade, but many more will die as a result of climate change than would have if we could stop climate change now. That effect is already happening.
- maccard 3y agoPeople are dying right now due to it [0]. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/19/world/libya-floods-climate-change-impact/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/19/world/libya-floods-climat...
- Alupis 3y ago"Climate Change" has become the scapegoat for any disaster, be it fires, floods, etc. Governments love to pass the buck when it comes to blame... accepting no responsibility for incompetence.
- digging 3y agoYou're saying climate change isn't making disasters more frequent and more dangerous?
- Alupis 3y agoYou're saying government incompetence isn't making normal disasters more deadly?
- throwbadubadu 3y ago> Climate Change" has become the scapegoat for any disaster... accepting no responsibility for incompetence. No, now you are mixing two different topics together for your agenda.
- Alupis 3y agoNo I am not. Floods have happened since the beginning of time. Blaming poor preparations, poor responses and high casualty rates on mysterious forces outside our control is exactly what governments are doing (including in the linked article). Climate Change did not cause that flood, nor did Climate Change kill those people. The government of Libya did - anything else is a misdirection. We see this everywhere. Wildfires, hurricanes, floods, etc. These things have always happened - yet our responses and preparations are lacking - therefore "what could we possibly do? climate change!" is usually the answer. Never do we accept responsibility for our actions, such as decades of mismanagement, reduced budgets, indecisive leadership, and worse. The root cause of these floods was actually identified - decades of mismanaging their dam infrastructure. But, somehow, when the rotting dams finally gave way it's suddenly Climate Change at fault - not the incompetent Libyan government.
- throwbadubadu 3y agoYes, and no. Responsibility and preparation (as well as avoidance measures) are lacking, yes, but also our self created climate change is responsible for increased frequency and strength of occurrences... doesn't help if these happened also before, and lacking similar if not more responsibility. Mixing two things. > Climate Change did not cause that flood, nor did Climate Change kill those people. It is all a probability game so you can't never say certainly, but it is very probable that flood wouldn't have happened, at least not that strong, without that much more energy, moisture etc in the atmosphere, so you are very likely wrong.
- Fricken 3y agoWhat did the UN Secretary general say the other day? He said "Humanity has opened the gates of Hell", which, I think, is a much more sensible and down-tempo way to phrase it.
- foobarian 3y agoWW1 and 2 veterans would probably have something to say about that.
- tsunagatta 3y agoHell comes in many forms.
- foobarian 3y ago"the gates" --> "another gate" then. :-)
- digging 3y agoSomething like "climate change is a liberal hoax"?
- throwbadubadu 3y agoGive it some more decades... the ""good"" thing about the WWs was that humanity finding its sanity the one or other way, could just stop with it. What veterans may have to say could pale soonish vs unstoppable new hell.
- ironicdenier 3y agoThey are not wrong…
- tpmx 3y agoYou think they will all be dead by 2033, from climate change?
- throwanem 3y agoAn apocalypse is a revelation is a paradigm shift is a singularity: in all cases, you cannot know what you'll find on the other side. That doesn't mean you can't, or that you needn't, fear it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tpmx 3y agoAsking for a simple yes or no to a direct yes or no question is way too demeaning for such a sophisticated person as yourself, I suppose. I now realize the errors of my ways and apologize profusely; clearly I am not worthy.
- throwanem 3y agoA simple yes or no is an insufficient answer for a question so complex in its context. Would you rather I toss off a foolish lie than answer in a way that at least strives to be worth your time?
- edc117 3y agoI think kids act like this because society has created this problem, and continues to ignore it because it's financially expedient. There's a great deal of frustration about their impotency to affect environmental change - hell, any change that would result in less money for the wealthy. Pessimism and hyperbole is a natural outcome.
- VincentEvans 3y agoI recall how just recently we were reading reports on rapid improvement in emissions due to reduced commuting in the wake of COVID. The air was getting cleaner. Animal populations were recovering around places where the usual human activity was subdued. But now we are herding people back into the offices after 2-3 years of alleged spectacular productivity gains while working remote - because being in the office is “more productive”, and any talk about the emissions and environmental impact is getting completely lost in the noise of the celebration to this “return to normal”. Apple, Amazon, and the rest tout their marginal green initiatives while signaling that those who fail to make the energy guzzling and pollution spewing daily commute from however far to the office - will need to find new jobs. Kids on reddit are usually not yet broken and jaded enough to swallow ladle-fulls of hypocrisy like the rest of us “adults with responsibilities and 401Ks” can.
- SamPatt 3y ago>any change that would result in less money for the wealthy The majority of CO2 emissions aren't from wealthy nations but developing nations - this might not be true in per capita terms, but the atmosphere doesn't care about per capita terms. A molecule is a molecule, and if you want fewer of them in the atmosphere, then you can't blame the wealthy - there simply aren't that many of them. It's the regular people who would need to cut back, and that's especially unfair when it's being asked of people whose economies never fully developed in the first place.
- digging 3y agoAnd your conclusion is... that there's nothing we can or should do? Mine is that the wealthy should risk their money in order to invest in more sustainable economies for those less developed nations. That would solve the problem, right? Wonder why they won't do it... > any change that would result in less money for the wealthy
- hotpotamus 3y agoDo you think their lives may be materially affected within a decade? And how many decades of climate change does a child today have to look forward to? I'm not a child, but I'm not quite old either and I'm pretty displeased about the near future; I can't fault children for being pissed or nihilistic about what they've got coming.
- Projectiboga 3y agoActually it is likely our civilization will collapse over the next few to at most a dozen years. This was the hottest year ever, South America hit over 100 degrees during their winter recently. The sun cycle is just getting to its hot phase now in September. Next year will make this year look like a fond memory. The release of civilization ending methane hydrates from the arctic ocean is already underway and is about to commence a rapid acceleration next summer or the one after during this upcoming El Nino hot cycle. The flip to a new climate system happens over only about a dozen years over the last millions of years. We are now deep into this catastrophic cycle. https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/ https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/ The things that will get us are the fact that arctic cold snaps aren't kept up north anymore, so a risk is a cold snap in May, early June wiping out summer crops. Second risk is dangerous combination of heat and humidity will hit. The issue is that while we still have ice cover we have some extra reflectivity and it takes lots of energy to melt ice the last degree, compared to moving water up any degrees further, so the Arctic ice has provided a buffer, and now it is mostly gone, there isn't old ice any more just a thin recent coat on the arctic ocean. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/how-is-climate-change-driving-dangerous-wet-bulb-temperatures-2023-08-09/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/how-is-climate-... And big oil and knowledgeable scientists knew this would be an issue back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Exxon went all in to fund confusing misinformation starting in the 1970s.
- SamPatt 3y agoAfter a dozen years, if most measures of living standards have continued increasing as they have for the last few centuries, what conclusion will you draw from that? I ask because I recall hearing these exact catastrophic arguments (methane hydrates, changes in albedo) more than a dozen years ago.
- polotics 3y agoThis Arctic-News site is very interesting: the alarmism in there, with statements for example that the earth could become uninhabitable already in 2026, seem to me like perfect future fodder for continued climate-change denialism as soon as, well, 2026. Luckily the style of display and a few slips in the pseudo-scientific wordage of the presentation kind of spills the beans for the awake reader.
- digging 3y ago> When I go on reddit the kids seem to think they'll all die within a decade. Here's the thing: they're kids. They're not capable of having the same measured responses that adults have. If they were, they're be much more reasonable about the growing uncertainties of food and water security in the richest empire in human history. They'd be calmer about the real-time collapse of natural and social systems that every other generation has depended upon for every need. They would know what the upper limits of their future problems would be by rationally predicting the effects of impossible-to-predict catastrophic changes on earth, like you and I do.
- Aurornis 3y agoDesigning for the future and seeking new ways to be mindful of the climate is great, but this person has taken the concept several iterations too far. Once you start getting hesitant about using mealworms to consume plastic waste because it feels "very capitalistic", you're just shooting yourself in the foot. > Hedström has proposed factory-like systems that would feed plastic waste to mealworms on an industrial scale, but he grapples with the ethical and practical problems in doing so. (It takes a colony of three to four thousand mealworms a week to digest a coffee cup.) “It’s very capitalistic or, like, it’s a very human way of thinking,” Hedström said. It doesn’t feel like symbiosis if one of you is being farmed. This is a good example of ideology gone too far. Taken to the extremes, even good intentions start getting weirdly misaligned.
- samirillian 3y agoI agree, though it's consistent with the extremes to which non-harm gets taken in many Eastern religions, which according to the article were a strong influence on his ethics. Not eating root-vegetables, etc.
- throwaway4aday 3y agoThe only cure for this is to drop the person off 500km from civilization, preferably in northern Canada (with gear and a guide of course) and have them hike and bivouac their way back. After that experience all notions of negotiating equitable terms with meal worms will be forgotten.
- digging 3y ago> This is a good example of ideology gone too far. What does "too far" mean here? What boundary exactly has been crossed? It's not as if he canned the idea - further, it's not as if anyone is actually building it anyway.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago> What does "too far" mean here? mealworms don't have feelings, and extrapolating "capitalism" out of that has little basis outside of a vaguely leftist geo-hippy reaction to capitalism. edit: and to be clear, i'm not a huge fan of capital, but the idea that this is some ruthless capitalistic evil is straight laughable.
- Nick87633 3y agoAlways bothers me when reading long articles about designers and artists with only a single image of any of their work!
- hnuser847 3y ago> For his final presentation at architecture school, Hedström proposed Inxect Island, an apartment complex built around mealworm farming, sustained by ocean-borne plastic, on a decommissioned oil rig moored outside Tórshavn. This sounds more like the set of a Balenciaga runway show than an a helpful vision for the future. Complete with a dash of "zey vill eat zee bugs", it's hard to tell whether or not this is satire.
- hrunt 3y agoArchitecture school is all about the fanciful. Whether or not the proposals will work in real life are secondary to the creative process that gets you to them (aside from purposeful courses like Structures or Materials). That something like this was proposed for an architecture final crit doesn't surprise me. The real accomplishment here is this student getting his way into a New Yorker featured article. Every once in a while, you'll hear something in a final crit like, "Uh, do you realize all your structural loads are coming down on to that one point?" Always good for a chuckle when someone brings up the practical failings of a design.
- kridsdale3 3y agoDERELICTE, Derek!
- digging 3y ago> it's hard to tell whether or not this is satire I don't see anything about it that reads like satire. It sounds pretty smart for a small, sustainable community.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]