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If we ever manage to halt this accelerating crisis we should seriously consider a modern-day equivalent of the Nuremberg trials. Thousands upon thousands needle
by Y-bar 2mo ago
If we ever manage to halt this accelerating crisis we should seriously consider a modern-day equivalent of the Nuremberg trials. Thousands upon thousands needlessly dead, https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766 https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766 (from 2024)
- sam_lowry_ 2mo agoSatoshi would be first in line?
- tensor 2mo agoNo, excessive fossil fuel use is the cause by an immense margin. It's completely dominated by commercial shipping (boats), followed by planes. Then I think it may actually be gas from cattle before cars. Bitcoin and AI are so recent and still relative to everything else small.
- esafak 2mo agoIs that so? Too bad nuclear civilian ships are not common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion
- vel0city 2mo agoI really feel like if the US really wanted to support US shipbuilding (like what the Jones act was supposed to do) it would subsidize building a fleet of nuclear shipping boats. Lots of manufacturing projects, lots of related industries boosted, a renewed investment in nuclear engineering bringing a lot of nuclear job experience, and a way to potentially dig deeper into the backbone of global trade again.
- scottLobster 2mo agoI love the theory, but the security concerns around nuclear anything are a big deal when we're talking ships that sail around the world. Imagine if even one of the tankers hit in the strait of Hormuz was nuclear.
- vel0city 2mo agoWould Iran be as likely to have hit one of these ships if the result was potentially a nuclear meltdown close to their shoreline? It would pretty radically change the costs to them for such an attack, wouldn't it?
- Ekaros 2mo agoIf you sink nuclear ship you won't get nuclear meltdown. You have enough thermal mass to cool down anything if you are underwater. Some level of loss of nuclear material would happen. But meltdown is not something that would happen.
- vel0city 2mo agoIts not like all the ships hit by attacks in the Straight of Hormuz sank. A ship could potentially become critically damaged and become unable to operate the reactor and still be floating. Either way, "loss of nuclear material" is the real concern isn't it, instead of just the nature of how that loss happened? The question still stands. If a country knows they're potentially going to cause a nuclear disaster by hitting one of these ships on their shoreline, are they as likely to shoot at them?
- scottLobster 2mo agoThe hardliners might want to cause a nuclear incident to keep the strait closed longer. And even among the non-hardliners mistakes are rampant in war. It's not about what they're likely to rationally do, it's about what some local, demoralized missile officer who graduated in the bottom 20% of his class does when he's cut off from command and drinking too much.
- nradov 2mo agoWidespread use of nuclear power for civilian merchant shipping is a non-starter. It's simply too expensive to train and pay enough qualified nuclear engineers. The US Navy barely manages this for a few dozen nuclear powered vessels with a huge budget and limited concern for cost effectiveness. Plus there are the security concerns. Every civilian nuclear power plant has armed guards on duty around the clock. Those guards have to also be trained and paid. Many foreign countries have laws against bringing weapons into their ports. If we want to reduce CO2 emissions from merchant ships then use nuclear or renewable power on shore to manufacture carbon neutral synthetic liquid fuel. Use that to run the ship engines.
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- othello 2mo agoThis is completely incorrect. Aviation contributes 2.5% of global emissions (but is terrible on a per capita basis, as only around 10% of the world's population travels on any given year). Global shipping accounts for 2.3% of global human-made emissions [1]. In transport emissions, passenger vehicles dominate by far (with around 12% of global GHG emissions), even more so in developed countries. Then freight by road with 7.5% of total emissions. Maritime shipping is actually the least carbon intensive way to transport goods over long distances by at least two orders of magnitude [2]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport [2] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/transport/06_figure_8-6/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/transport/06_figure_8-6/
- tao_oat 2mo agoElectricity (including heating) is actually the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, but transport is indeed number 2: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector Followed by agriculture & manufacturing.
- jandrewrogers 2mo agoAI and bitcoin, regardless of what one thinks of them, have made negligible contributions to climate change. It is below the noise floor relative to other major industrial and commercial sources of atmospheric CO2. Virtually all of the current conditions were in motion before bitcoin and AI were even a thing.
- nprateem 2mo agoOpinion stated as fact
- vonneumannstan 2mo agoIts a well trod problem: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435119302557 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511... Not exactly background noise but totally incomparable to the normal CO2 outputs of major nations like the US or China. I.e. ~20 Million Tons CO2 vs 4 Trillion and 13 Trillion Tons respectively.
- atoav 2mo agoSure. But you have to weigh any application relative to (1) how useful it is and (2) how easy it would be to rely on a carbon-neutral alternative. And I would argue the usefulness of bitcoin is negative from the viewpoint of a free society. AI is to a certain degree a different story, but also there it depends what you're doing. We live in a thin atmospheric skin around the planet, and that skin has a finite volume. If earth was the size of an apple, the atmosphere is thinner than the Apple's skin in proportion. Pretending we can do whatever we like for infinitly long inside an finite volume is completely unhinged. The financial and political elites, who some frame as the true geniuses point to technological solutions that are always "just around the corner" for the past decades with some of them even eying to leave the planet behind entirely. All of that while we know how to address the issue.
- tancop 2mo ago> the usefulness of bitcoin is negative from the viewpoint of a free society if you mean PoW mining instead of crypto in general then maybe. ethereum uses about as much power as a small village in europe so it should never be a target for climate action. the public benefit of blockchains is real and it comes from the fact that no one controls them and they let users ignore the law. thats the part governments dont like. corporations also dont like it even if they work in the industry, coinbase and binance started their own chains so they would have full control over the way they evolve. crypto is a cypherpunk/anarchist technology that got hijacked by investors to sell their scam coins and fake decentralized web services. without it your only option for buying things that are illegal in your country (weed, abortion pills, guns, hacking tools) is sending cash in paper mail or using some complicated scheme where you have to trust third parties. i think thats worth some tax evasion.
- pbkompasz 2mo agoI’d put people who have maliciously and intentionally undermined action on climate change first. Donald Trump comes to mind.
- user43928 2mo agoOn the topic of thousands needlessly dead, look at the UN's suggestions: Useless yapping about opening windows at night, protecting the vulnerable, limiting global warming to 1.5C, and not drinking caffeine. Is any of this "Call to Action" actually actionable? Obviously not; and it is pathetic. What should be actioned: - remove regulatory hurdles to AC installation - mandate such installation in residences that otherwise reach unbearable temperatures - make funds available to subsidize the installation or train more workers for AC installation That would 'protect the vulnerable'. Talking about opening windows at night or climate change does nothing, and is performative only.
- tonyedgecombe 2mo agoBig AC strikes again.
- atoav 2mo agoYes and: doing things that fight the cause of the warming?
- user43928 2mo agoSure, but this should be an afterthought here. You cannot talk about thousands dying today, neglect to mention the actionable solution, and talk only about climate action which will help on a time frame of decades to centuries.
- bsian 2mo agoThe thousands dying are just a means to an end. They don't really care about them.
- atoav 2mo agoI grew up in the 90s and there was a book in climate in my shelf that talked about thousands dying today, nearly three decades back. At some point we should stop pretending this is a new and surprising danger and start treating it as the risk we willingly steered ourselves into. If you live next to a road and every other month a car crashed through your living room wall you'd probably fix the root cause after the first time it happened. If you are clever you fixed it even before it occurs. What you would not do is only deal with the damage caused month for month and pretend there is no need to address the root cause. The reason why many pretend our only option is handing out band aids while the blade keeps spinning, is because it is hard to imagine anything else, if your salary depends on you not addressing the problem. It feels more and more like watching a bus driver playing chicken against a solid, immovable concrete wall. It is obvious who wins, the only question is into which directions the scrap explodes most, while the driver eyes for the ejector seat. And all the kids pretend driving into the wall is the only reasonable option. It is possible for humanity to create unsurvivable conditions in our earths atmosphere. Should we do that if there is enough profit in it? If not, where would you draw the line and how would you set/enforce the limits?
- dyauspitr 2mo ago[flagged]
- sebtron 2mo agoWalking outside with 40°C is not "enjoying the beautiful weather", it is miserable. Air conditioning only solves part of the problem.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoWalking outside in 40° weather is enjoyable
- Timon3 2mo agoAre you aware how different 40° weather can feel based on humidity? Because it doesn't take much humidity to make a walk at 40° deadly. You might be used to very dry heat.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoI’m in the southern United States and I go for a 5-10 mile run every day in 35 to 40C weather. It’s pretty humid but the heat makes me feel alive. I love it. I do sweat readily and profusely though at the slightest increase in temperature so maybe that has something to do with it. I was also in Southern Germany and Croatia for a whole month last month and I thought the weather was fantastic the whole time. Given access to water and some shade, it was beyond me how these many people were dying from it.
- Ekaros 2mo agoWould opposing nuclear energy qualify as such action? The emission difference was well known and fully scientifically provable at time.
- uecker 2mo agoNo, because nuclear energy is not a cost effective measure against climate change. Solar is.
- scottLobster 2mo agoIf climate change is indeed an existential threat, then by definition nuclear is cost-effective. And at any rate, why not both?
- Y-bar 2mo agoWe do not have infinite resources. Committing 7-11 years and countless billions to build a NPP leads to those funds and other resources to be unavailable elsewhere. Each wind farm, each set of solar panels, each battery storage will begin to pay dividends immediately as each one is finished. While the huge plant will be nothing-nothing-nothing-... for years upon years. Builders, engineers, capital, and such is better suited to be investing in other sources of energy.
- halfmatthalfcat 2mo agoThe complicit parties of climate change are so wide you would probably have to try thousands and thousands of people across most of the developed world. The cohort is probably so large that it’s more a reflection of society generally than the malicious acts of a few.
- bsian 2mo ago[flagged]
- forestrywat 2mo agoNonsense. Anyone who wants forced labor camps is a fascist. I don't care what they call themselves. Once you stop caring about wellbeing for everyone you stop being a leftist. (Which is your insinuation.) Also, there is more than one political aisle. The left (who broadly want to redistribute wealth) is distinct from democrats (who are capitalists) is distinct from the various parts of the GOP.
- cduzz 2mo agoThe US Constitution, specifically the 13th amendment, allows: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall be duly convicted, shall exist within the United STates or any place subject to their jurisdiction. So in fact, forced labor camps are totally legal and common in the United States. There are lots of private companies which operate these prison / factory systems and are quite profitable (unsurprisingly), such as NYSE:GEO. All governments "redistribute wealth" friend, not just the left or right or up or down. It all depends on which side of the bars you live on, amirite?
- forestrywat 2mo agoYou ain't disagreeing. Anyone who wants or engages in forced labor is fascist. Sounds like you found an example of that in the US. Yep. Many such cases.
- 2mo ago
- abeppu 2mo agoI think we should start charging the worst emitters with manslaughter now. We shouldn't wait for the crisis to be halted; the law should be part of how we force firms to recognize part of the harm.
- amanaplanacanal 2mo agoThe largest emitters are electricity generation and personal transport. So... Heads of power companies and everybody that drives a car?
- abeppu 2mo agoHow about large scale fossil fuel emitters (including power production) who have lobbied against their own clean replacements (e.g. solar, wind, weakening net metering)? I do think that ICE car drivers who have ever, e.g. voted against public transit are guilty of _something_ but I don't think it's manslaughter. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/opinion/utility-bills-clean-energy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/opinion/utility-bills-cle...
- melling 2mo agoWe should start with all the people on HN who told us we didn’t need nuclear power. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nuclear+climate+change https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nuclear+climate+change https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=nuclear%20climate%20change&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Start 11 years ago and go backwards https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1439337600&dateRange=custom&dateStart=965433600&page=0&prefix=false&query=nuclear%20climate%20change&sort=byDate&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1439337600&dateRange=custom&...
- adammarples 2mo agoThis is not an argument for global warming, but do bear in mind that cold kills far more and on balance global warming has saved lives here. The issue is going to cause worse problems than heat deaths though. However, a big wet bulb event could completely reverse that count.