[HN Gopher] Carbon dioxide peaks near 420 parts per million at M...
___________________________________________________________________
Carbon dioxide peaks near 420 parts per million at Mauna Loa
observatory
Author : gmays
Score : 162 points
Date : 2021-06-08 20:12 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (research.noaa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (research.noaa.gov)
| textech wrote:
| This is serious. I'm sure that this will have and is likely
| already having some serious impact on humans that we don't know
| much about despite what the studies claim.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Serious question - will it cause plants to grow faster since
| they consume CO2?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Yes, in many greenhouses CO2 is added to the atmosphere. But
| 10% faster plant growth does not compensate for thay fact
| that we reduced forest cover in uk to like 12%
| azornathogron wrote:
| Yes, the increase in CO2 levels has probably caused an
| increase in plant growth.
|
| NASA Earth Observatory:
|
| https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146296/global-
| green...
| mturmon wrote:
| This is true. It's not universal, though, because some
| plant growth is not primarily gated by CO2 availability --
| e.g., in drier climates.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The sorta bigger half here is that it allows plants to grow
| in more locations than with lower CO2 levels, because plants
| can photosynthesize while using less water than before (they
| need to expose themselves to the atmosphere less).
|
| Which is why you more often see stuff like deserts greening
| when they were dead before. The Amazon rainforest isn't going
| to 2x in height.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Maybe _slightly_ but it 's very rare that the limiting factor
| on plant growth is the availability of CO2. Much more
| commonly plants are limited by access to nutrients and
| sunlight.
|
| I worked for an algae biotech company and while we did "dope"
| our ponds with CO2, providing ample mixing to get more
| sunlight and supplementing the ponds with plentiful nutrients
| (the "big 3" but also trace elements of a number of more
| obscure inputs) had dramatically larger impacts on growth
| rates.
|
| AFAIK, the FACE studies do show faster growth with more CO2,
| but it's only observable at concentrations ~200ppm over
| ambient. [https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1
| 469-8137....]
| [deleted]
| plutonorm wrote:
| I wonder if it might slow metabolism and increase obesity
| levels. There were some strange stories a few years ago about a
| study that concluded it wasn't just humans that have gotten
| fatter in recent times, but wild animals too. Even laboratory
| animals kept under supposedly identical conditions have gotten
| fatter. I am sure you can look up the reports if you google.
| aazaa wrote:
| > "The ultimate control knob on atmospheric CO2 is fossil-fuel
| emissions," said Ralph Keeling. "But we still have a long way to
| go to halt the rise, as each year more CO2 piles up in the
| atmosphere. We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and
| sustained longer than the COVID-related shutdowns of 2020."
|
| I get the sense that most people concerned about this trend hold
| out a lot of hope for technology. But cuts as large as Keeling is
| talking about will take sustained cuts to consumption. In other
| words, rich countries actually consuming less, despite the
| economic consequences. It could take the form of rationing. Maybe
| consumption taxes. Maybe something more unusual. And that's never
| been on the table in any meaningful way.
| tito wrote:
| If you're interested in how to remove and mine carbon from the
| air, come check out AirMiners: http://airminers.org
|
| We're hosting the AirMiners Launchpad to help early startup teams
| and solo-founders get off the ground:
| http://launchpad.airminers.org
|
| If you've already got a founding team and idea, YCombinator has
| an RFS for carbon removal startups: http://carbon.ycombinator.com
| koheripbal wrote:
| I clicked around, but I didn't see. Is there a device that you
| sell to capture CO2? Does it capture more than the plant I
| planted in my office?
| knodi123 wrote:
| It's a very vague website, but it almost seems like they're a
| business that sells the answer to that question? If so -
| yuck.
| progbits wrote:
| No amount of VC funding trying to rip CO2 from air is going to
| save us. Stop putting it there in the first place. Carbon tax,
| regulation on fossil fuels, ...
| lapp0 wrote:
| Carbon capture technologies tend to cost more carbon to
| operate than they are able to actually sequester. Currently
| very much a pipe dream, especially considering that on a
| worldwide scale, the carbon equation is still overwhelmingly
| pushing in the worse direction (more carbon being burned,
| more forests being removed).
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I think you're looking at a 'yes, and' situation. The IPCC's
| simulations just sort of assume we not only cut our carbon
| emissions but come up with some effective form of carbon
| capture. Without both, our goose is cooked, but we certainly
| can't rely on carbon capture alone.
| keithwhor wrote:
| It terrifies me that we're asphyxiating ourselves and increased
| CO2 can seriously impair human cognition. At a global,
| population-level scale this is almost certainly statistically
| significant and it scares me that we could quite literally
| stupefy ourselves to the point of no return. We need to find
| solutions now before we're unable to stop ourselves from drowning
| in our own atmosphere.
|
| [0]
| https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...
| koheripbal wrote:
| I have a CO2 monitor in my home office. 800-1100 ppm are pretty
| normal readings. If I open a window, I can get it down to ~400
| ppm, but I don't notice any difference between the two.
|
| I've heard that ~4000 ppm is noticeable and can impair, but
| it's impossible to get the level that high, even in a closed
| room with no ventilation.
| everdrive wrote:
| 1,400 to 2,000 is pretty noticeable to me.
| notJim wrote:
| What does it feel like? And have you tried to mitigate
| confirmation bias at all? I'm just curious, bc I work in a
| small office.
| drran wrote:
| I cannot work after 900-1000 ppm CO2.
| jxramos wrote:
| would you mind sharing the model of the monitor? I'm
| interesting in getting one now.
| lsllc wrote:
| I also have a CO2 monitor and see similar readings. I try to
| open the windows each morning before it gets hot outside to
| get some fresh air.
|
| I have noticed sometimes when it gets around 1200, I start to
| get headaches which are almost always relieved by either
| opening the windows, or going outside (having the dog
| sleeping in my office doesn't help either, she definitely
| helps bump up the CO2 numbers!).
|
| The highest I've ever seen it is around 1500.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Not to be dismissive, but when I hear of an individual
| reporting symptom X given a meter saying Y, I always wonder
| whether you read the meter and then focus on whether you
| feel Y (ok, easy enough to control for by not reading
| first), read the meter only when you have a headache
| (perhaps it's above 1200 at other times as well, but ok
| that's also easy to control for if you care to), or even
| just get used to the pattern when it's high like in the
| morning before you open windows, or you can feel when the
| windows were open (colder/warmer depending on outside
| temperature). You'd need some completely random CO2 level,
| not have any way of indirectly knowing the value, then
| spend time in there and repeat it a few times to say that
| this is really it.
|
| However, I remember ~1000ppm being the level where studies
| also said that people start to report headaches. It appears
| to vary from person to person; both of your observations
| (you at 1200, GP claiming 1100 is no problem for them) are
| likely correct, but I wouldn't _trust_ either observation.
| Just google /ddg it if you want to know what can happen at
| different CO2 levels.
| edrxty wrote:
| Working out indoors I've noticed a pretty drastic correlation
| in measured splits/watts and CO2 over 1k ppm. I tend to
| notice it at the 1k mark and it falls off exponentially form
| there when working out with large numbers of other people in
| enclosed spaces.
| jlintz wrote:
| which one are you using?
| bioinformatics wrote:
| It's 420 parts per MILLION. You exhales even more than that.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| One would certainly hope that your exhaled breath contains a
| higher concentration of carbon dioxide than is present in the
| ambient air! For it to be _lower_ , your lungs would have to
| be somehow removing CO2 from the air, which doesn't sound
| much like what mammals do; for it to even be exactly equal,
| you would have to not be emitting CO2.
| drran wrote:
| I'm engineer, so here my solutions:
|
| 1. Use sustainable materials for construction (8% CO2).
|
| 2. Use thick layer of sustainable insulation and climate
| battery to reduce need for heating and cooling to 0 (10% CO2).
|
| 3. Use cheap suspended light rail system connected to every
| house to reduce commuting time, road kills, and CO2 emissions
| (12% CO2).
|
| 4. Generate energy and protect coastal line by massive wave
| electricity generator.
|
| And so on.
| edrxty wrote:
| >I'm engineer, so here my solutions
|
| >reduce need for heating and cooling to 0
|
| >light rail system connected to every house
|
| >massive wave electricity generator
|
| Ummm, all of these except maybe #1 are far less viable than
| the proven alternatives. The issue isn't a technological one,
| it's an adoption, regulation, and funding problem.
| Udik wrote:
| The typical concentration of co2 in a "well aerated" indoors
| environment is between 400 and 1000ppm. So, no.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| 1000 ppm is about where cognitive impairment starts, and that
| much or higher is commonly found in classrooms. If the
| outdoor ppm keeps going up, it only stands to reason the
| indoor level will as well.
| jjulius wrote:
| >So, no.
|
| If you're cooking something at a low temperature, but you
| accidentally turn the heat up really high, do you adjust the
| temp as soon as you realize what's going on in order to
| prevent over-cooking, or do you just let it ride and see what
| happens, high risk of over-cooking be damned?
| ianai wrote:
| I was hoping for change when the world stopped during lockdowns
| last year. Like pulling your hand out of warm water after
| slowly acclimating to it previously then re-entering your hand
| in the water - the smog/pollution coming back with reopening
| could result in people experiencing an en-masse revolt to
| pollution and the things causing it. Or maybe it's too soon to
| see this effect - since viable alternatives are just coming
| along?
| dasudasu wrote:
| China should be the bellwether for this as they had early
| lockdowns that initially decreased emissions. They still
| managed to emit more cumulatively in 2020 than in 2019. They
| keep increasing their emissions while everyone is distracted.
| They won't be the only one. In many places, mostly developing
| nations, there will be pressures to make up for the economic
| losses.
|
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-carbon-
| emissions...
| rodgerd wrote:
| Instead we've got economists agitating for taxing at-home
| workers to punish them for undercutting the expected profits
| of the owners of CBD property empires.
| bdamm wrote:
| Electric vehicles certainly went up in profile, and not by a
| little bit. The bicycle industry had significant growth as
| well. Related?
| briefcomment wrote:
| It's probably not as clear cut as that. Studies at the bottom
| of this article.
|
| [0] http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/genes-carbon-dioxide-
| ad...
| xwdv wrote:
| In the short term we could supplement with portable oxygen.
| gdubs wrote:
| If our global reaction to Covid is any guide, we'll ignore the
| warnings about Climate Change until they're undeniably upon us -
| at which point people will say, "how did no one warn us about
| this?" Unfortunately, barring any yet-to-be-invented
| technologies, by that point the worst effects will be
| irreversible.
|
| I'd love to be wrong on this one. But the sky turned orange for a
| week last year, as wildfires tragically demolished entire
| communities just 35 minutes by car from where I sit. EPA didn't
| know how to classify the air quality. There were so many fires up
| and down the West Coast last year they started simply numbering
| them, or labeling them as whole collections. Here in the PNW
| we've had a shockingly hot and dry spring, with ominous
| implications for this summer.
|
| I'll leave you with this: check out 'The Carbon Farming
| Solution'. It's an incredibly well-researched book. It's in my
| wheelhouse, but I think it would appeal to a lot of you here (and
| yes, I've mentioned it a bunch of times before.) It goes both
| wide and deep on many aspects of land-use change, and is sober
| and realistic in what we can hope to achieve through better land-
| stewardship, and rethinking our food system.
|
| 1: http://carbonfarmingsolution.com
|
| 2: Please don't waste time arguing with me about how 'there have
| always been wildfires'. What we're facing now is incomparable to
| the annual burns that used to happen here hundreds of years ago -
| though prescribed burns to reduce fuel load are certainly
| something we should be trying to do.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Your comment is mostly drivel, but I'll make a comment then add
| something useful at the end.
|
| > But the sky turned orange for a week last year, as wildfires
|
| California doesn't and can't manage its forests properly, so
| orange skies are expected annually. Very little to do with
| climate change.
|
| The useful part in the article:
|
| What's interesting in the article is that CO2 levels increased
| during a pandemic shutdown. That should be investigated to see
| why.
|
| Climate scientists dream of the chance to collect measurement
| samples during cessation of human activities like this pandemic
| (same with the grounding of US aircraft during 9/11.)
| acchow wrote:
| > If our global reaction to Covid is any guide
|
| We invented new vaccine technologies to beat the pandemic. Yes,
| many people died but civilization did not collapse.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| This is different. With COVID, we knew the problem would
| solve itself in a couple years, even if we did nothing. We
| were in a race to save lives, not civilization.
|
| Climate change will not solve itself like this. It will keep
| reducing food supply and habitable land, causing mass
| migrations that sooner or later will end in wars. Trying to
| wait it out is suicide.
| spikels wrote:
| > It will keep reducing food supply
|
| The global food supply is increasing:
|
| * See production numbers for key crops - all are still
| increasing.
|
| * See famine and hunger numbers all are still decreasing.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yeah, it's increasing, because we're strip-mining the
| soil. It won't last. I'll counter your points with two of
| mine:
|
| * See the problem of soil depletion.
|
| * Consider that crops are temperature-sensitive, and
| continued warming of the planet will be turning currently
| food-rich areas into zones where crops cannot be grown.
| dnautics wrote:
| > Consider that crops are temperature-sensitive, and
| continued warming of the planet will be turning currently
| food-rich areas into zones where crops cannot be grown.
|
| This is probably the opposite of what is likely to
| happen, warmth is likely to enrich the food productivity
| of more northerly countries which tend to be politically
| more stable and have less distribution and corruption
| problems, resulting in more net food production, not
| less.
|
| > See the problem of soil depletion.
|
| Not related to the carbon dioxide issue.
|
| If you poison the carbon dioxide issue with unrelated or
| poorly-thought out assertations, you risk discrediting
| the real issue.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Climate change will not solve itself like this.'
|
| Well, it will but in 10,000 years, so noone will be around
| for that except neo-cavemen or something
| BobbyJo wrote:
| This is kind of a refutation of the parent, no? We knew
| things would work themselves out one way or another with
| COVID, so it was ok that we messed up. We know climate
| change won't work like that, so how then is COVID a good
| demonstration of our resolve and problem solving ability
| with respect to climate change?
| Etheryte wrote:
| This is a pretty misleading take on what happened. DARPA
| awarded the grants to research mRNA based vaccines in 2013.
| These vaccines were many, many years in the making before the
| pandemic hit and practically unlimited resources were poured
| into them to push the final stretch out. Even then, it
| required dropping many best practices around safety and
| validation just to get some kind of results out the door as
| fast as possible. So perhaps a better wording is that we got
| incredibly lucky that this specific grant was awarded over
| other similar ones and that it happened to bear fruit. It
| could've just as well been a different kind of pathogen and
| we would've been out in the cold. Saying we can just invent a
| fix when a problem comes up is not the right takeaway here.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27359269
| Lammy wrote:
| Luckily we wouldn't be starting from zero here either since
| DARPA has been doing climate research for thirty-plus
| years, and if the global climate situation turned dire I'm
| sure it would get more resources than even COVID did: https
| ://web.archive.org/web/19970429012543/http://www.au.af....
| graeme wrote:
| What best practices were dropped? The vaccines moved
| quickly because everyone gave them priority, and because
| there were many cases in the wild so the trials could amass
| the needed events quickly.
|
| mRNA vaccines have been great. But multiple conventional
| vaccines were developed about as fast and we'd probably do
| fine just with those.
| kbelder wrote:
| It would be wonderful if we could solve global warming as
| easily and as cheaply as we did Covid.
|
| And I think we might, once we start trying.
| graeme wrote:
| Yeah I'm increasingly optimistic we might actually succeed
| with carbon sucking solutions. Stripe Climate is a very
| exciting program, for instance.
|
| And I've been quick pessimistic on this issue. In 2010 I
| determined our society was default dead.
|
| It still is....but it's looking more and more likely we move
| the cost curves on carbon capture and can actually just pay
| to remove the excess and solve the problem.
| elbasti wrote:
| Sorry to burst your bubble but this optimism is just
| completely unfounded. Carbon removal is clearly a piece of
| the puzzle but if and only if we get to zero emissions
| _first_. This is basic thermodynamics.
|
| It takes more energy to remove carbon than it did to put it
| in the air, so getting all of that carbon out will take,
| basically, some multiple of all of the energy output of
| every power plant, every mile driven, every building built,
| in the past 200 years. We basically have to "undo" the past
| 200 years of civilization a few times over.
|
| In no way does carbon removal make sense if we don't stop
| pushing that stuff in the air first. I'm glad Stripe is
| investing in it, and it makes perfect sense for them to do
| so and it's _amazing_ of them, because we WILL need it, but
| only if the world doesn 't end first.
|
| The world is like a guy with advanced cancer. He has let
| his cancer grow rampant for two decades and he's now
| infested. Doctors say he has a few years to live. He needs
| chemo and surgery NOW. Maybe, just maybe, with extreme luck
| and the most skilled doctors, he'll make it. Like cancer,
| emissions reproduce and grow and every minute counts
| (growing cancer - arctic methane emissions).
|
| Carbon removal is... his gym membership. Yeah, it will be
| great for him to get in shape in order to have a healthy
| and happy future...but the miserable bastard has to survive
| first.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| And we can't talk about people having less, or no babies
| here. I know HN's stance on overpopulation.
|
| Yea, industrialized societies supposedly need copious
| amounts of young people for the economic system to
| function, but how about just less young people until we
| find an answer?
|
| (I won't be back to debate. I'm not an expert on
| anything. It just seems like more people in the world add
| to the global warming problem, especially in
| industrialized countries.)
| not_jd_salinger wrote:
| > until they're undeniably upon us
|
| We're undeniably impacted by climate change right this very
| second. You can take a drive along the Eastern coast of the
| United States and see water flooding the yards of homes that
| are all for sale. Likewise everyone I've heard of buying costal
| or near sea-level property has had a hell of a time getting a
| mortgage because it's hard to find flood insurance.
|
| You can watch the Arctic melt almost before your eyes [0]. If
| that doesn't shock someone right now, then I doubt the first
| blue ocean event will make a difference either.
|
| Coral reefs are being critically threatened right now from
| ocean acidification, you can watch them die.
|
| Arctic winds leaking out of the North as the polar vortex fails
| wreaked havoc across Texas.
|
| The Sierra snow pack, essential for the maintenance of the
| fresh water supply for both California and Nevada continues to
| worsen and worsen with what are becoming rare years of it
| returning.
|
| Record drought in the West causes continually devastating
| wildfires which are also sources of massive CO2 emissions.
|
| All these are just a few off the top of my head that I've
| noticed.
|
| Just like pandemic, which still has its fair share of deniers,
| there will be non-trivial subsets of the population that
| adamantly deny that climate change is happening even if the
| entire Midwest were to turn into a dust bowl again. Demagogue
| after demagogue will emerge to point the finger at some group
| of people.
|
| But I full agree with your sentiment. Compared to climate
| change, solving pandemic should have been a cakewalk. If we had
| solved pandemic quickly I would still be skeptical about
| climate change because it is so much harder to stop. But since
| we utterly failed to address pandemic, it is already far too
| late to image we have any change to alter the path climate
| change is taking.
|
| Maybe denial is ultimately the best approach for those that
| can't move towards horrific acceptance.
|
| [0]. https://www.arcticdeathspiral.org/
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > If our global reaction to Covid is any guide, we'll ignore
| the warnings about Climate Change
|
| If global reaction to climate change is any guide we'll ignore
| warnings about climate change as we have since the 70s and
| earlier.
|
| > There were so many fires up and down the West Coast last year
|
| As someone living in Western Oregon I'm really afraid what our
| air is going to be like come September given that the drought
| is worse this year than last. I have air filters at the ready.
| rodgerd wrote:
| There were a number of big public policy successes in the
| 70s/80s/90s around smoking, lead pollution, and ozone
| destruction. And having seen that, megacorps have been
| refining their playbooks to make sure that it never, ever
| happens again.
| danielodievich wrote:
| I have similar perspective and it is very depressing to see the
| world marching towards destruction of the modern civilization.
|
| I was speaking about this to a friend and he recommended to
| read book called Drawdown to lift me out of despair. The book
| is published in the library and all of it is available at
| https://drawdown.org/. It was great to see that the work to fix
| or at least slow things down is already underway. But of course
| by no means guaranteed to succeed. Especially since that
| collection of essays did kind of dance around the biggest
| challenge of industrial rapacious capitalism really being
| incompatible with caretaking of the entire planet in a fair and
| balanced way.
|
| On that note, somehow right after reading The Drawdown I
| stumbled on (I think via HN maybe?) Kim Stanley Robinson's The
| Ministry for the Future
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future)
| which I swear takes a lot of the stuff from The Drawdown and
| lays out a path to turning things around that includes a lot of
| people saying no to the current way of doing things and finally
| caring for the environment. It was interesting to see the pleas
| of Mary to the bankers who the book makes a great case are
| actually the rulers of the world with the quotes of USA's
| central bankers from just a couple of days where they
| explicitly state that climate is not within their purview.
|
| I don't know. I got children and I get really depressed about
| shit they will have to deal with. My parents were similarly
| depressed when they were my age now, and I was my children age
| now, and nothing got done.
|
| Wishing us all lots and lots of luck.
| handrous wrote:
| There's no short-term solution effective enough to make much
| difference, that doesn't reduce the standard of living in rich
| countries, and/or cap the standard of living in developing
| countries. It's not happening. Rich countries aren't gonna say
| "OK, everyone, you get a lot less stuff and can't travel as
| much now" and developing countries aren't going to accept that
| they can't aspire to a "Western" quality of life. Hell, an
| abrupt decline in standard of living is one of the surest ways
| to get political unrest, violence, and revolutions, even when
| the reduction is from "very, very high" to "very high" (and
| even "very high" would probably still be too high, in this
| scenario).
| pxi wrote:
| This very depressing number should be on the mast-head of every
| news paper/web along side the covid statistics. One good thing
| about covid was a distraction from climate depression.
| jxramos wrote:
| > Perched on a barren volcano in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
| the Mauna Loa observatory is a benchmark sampling location for
| CO2. It's ideally situated for sampling well-mixed air-
| undisturbed by the influence of local pollution sources or
| vegetation, producing measurements that represent the average
| state of the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere.
|
| Time series plot (just need to click the Submit button to the
| left)
| https://gml.noaa.gov/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=MLO&program=ccgg...
| knodi123 wrote:
| why is it a sawtooth shape? i.e. why is carbon PPM on a yearly
| cycle? (I'm not referring to the overall trend)
| mturmon wrote:
| Annual periodicity of CO2 is due to seasonal drawdown of C by
| greening-up plants in the Northern Hemisphere.
| kbelder wrote:
| I take it as a sign that Mauna Loa is about to erupt.
| brink wrote:
| It's in Hawaii.. The way it was worded, it initially sounded
| like it was thousands of miles from everywhere.
| koheripbal wrote:
| CO2 is very evenly distributed. I have a monitor in my house
| and I also get around 420ppm.
| jxramos wrote:
| Do those things reflect when the indoor air quality gets
| too stuffy by any chance? In those instances can you see
| the ppm rise some amount?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I'm pretty sure 'stuffiness' isn't measured on any meter.
| jxramos wrote:
| right, but in conditions that are stuffy as detected by
| the user does the meter reflect increased C02. Seems like
| it does according to some other threads where people
| report feeling `xyz` when numbers reach `abc`.
| azornathogron wrote:
| It might be...
|
| I would imagine at least all the component parts are
| measurable. I assume it's some combination of
| temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, the level of certain
| volatiles, complex organic compounds, and particulate
| matter. If it's dominated by one of those then measuring
| that would be a reasonable approximation of a stuffiness
| meter.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| The closest part of any other US state to Hawaii is an
| Alaskan island: https://www.quora.com/How-far-is-Hawaii-from-
| the-nearest-lan...
|
| >Located near the town of False Pass, the tip of an unnamed
| peninsula overlooking Ikatan Bay is exactly 2,259.28 miles
| (3,636.44 kilometers) from a part of Tunnels Beach on the
| island of Kauai.
|
| So yes, thousands of miles.
| yosito wrote:
| The good news is, now it should go down and for the next 11
| months it will be lower than this.
|
| The bad news is, though the peak happens every year around now,
| the peak has increased linearly every year for the last 25 years
| and there doesn't appear to be any change in that trend.
| ioquatix wrote:
| So what are we going to do about it?
| lucb1e wrote:
| To answer the question directly by typing out all the little
| choices I make, I'd probably be still typing tomorrow morning.
| The problem is that I'm quite certain that my emissions still
| above half anyone else's (where 1/10th would be sustainable, so
| "not even 1/2"...), since I also try not to live like a hermit
| despite caring a lot. Basically you could say I'm doing nothing
| effective... :/
|
| The biggest thing I'm doing at the moment is thinking how to
| improve this. My next career move should be to a company that
| reduces CO2 emissions. As a last resort, I'd invest some
| capital in a startup that does what I can't (I'm not a
| physicist or chemist that can make methane-free cows or work on
| GMO crops or improve solar panels' efficiency).
|
| The company I currently work for is very small and we don't
| have any processes that are a significant contributor to global
| warming (we hardly travel, don't construct buildings, use
| considerable amounts of steel, those sorts of things), and my
| colleagues are already doing more than what one can expect from
| the average person anyway (both in business and privately) so
| not much influence I can have there. As a security consultancy,
| it's also not as if we've got the expertise to help other
| companies reduce theirs. I'm not sure this is what I want to do
| forever because while it doesn't hurt, it doesn't really help
| either.
|
| Suggestions here would be very welcome if anyone else struggled
| with this kind of life choice.
| _ph_ wrote:
| It is just scary. In my own life time, the CO2 content of the
| atmosphere has risen by over 90ppm. Humanity has increased the
| carbon content by 40ppm before my birth, and 90ppm after. Since
| my youth, temperatures in Europe have risen by over 1 degree.
| adammunich wrote:
| It blows my mind that we know this is a massive problem and yet
| here we are frogs boiling slowly, arguing.
| pavlov wrote:
| Look at Bitcoin and despair. The frogs have decided that those
| nifty bubbles in the water are actually money and are excitedly
| turning up the heat.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Why do people fixate on bitcoin?
|
| It's burning fossil fuel, transport and deforestation that
| causes climate change. For all you know, the worlds biggest
| miners are using renewable energy? I mean that could be
| theoretically possible.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think the fixation is because Bitcoin is a _novel_
| technology that is adding to all the problems you 've
| listed.
|
| We've made great technological strides in energy efficiency
| over the last few decades. From more efficient lighting and
| appliances to electric cars to cheaper clean energy sources
| like photovoltaics. By contrast, Bitcoin in a new
| technology that is not an efficiency improvement. In fact,
| it threatens to wipe out all that incremental progress.
| It's a heel-turn from a sector of the economy that, for a
| time, held the promise that it could find a way for us to
| address global warming through technological innovation.
| bamboozled wrote:
| What about fracking for gas? Seems pretty novel to me?
| Why not focus on that. Fracking sites leak huge amounts
| of methane into the atmosphere, destroy water tables why
| focus on a crypto currency that some people actually use?
|
| What about mass international air travel? There are lots
| of novel things happening, why focus on bitcoin?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Did I say I supported fracking?
|
| Besides, I don't work in the fracking industry, I work in
| the software industry. And it's painful to see my
| industry contributing to the problem in such a
| thoughtless way. Maybe if this was Fracking News and
| people were bashing on bitcoin you'd have a point.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Even if what you're saying is true, how do you supposed
| we "ban" cryptos or stop them? As a person who works on
| software, you'd have to realize how non-trivial it would
| be to stop.
|
| What about banning people from going for a drive just for
| fun, or on a holiday via aircraft ?
|
| It's a lot easier for governments to ban coal fire power
| stations and fracking replacing them with renewables and
| hydrogen storage.
|
| This is actually something we can control and do without
| taking over people's freedoms.
| lowkey wrote:
| I'm still waiting for my fair trade, organic, ethically
| made, non-strip mined gold. Gold has a market cap 10x
| Bitcoin held by central banks around the world and is mined
| at a rate of about 2% per year making it a bigger issue
| than Bitcoin mining.
|
| My understanding is that close to 100% of gold is mined
| using non-renewable energy. 100% of gold is strip mined in
| a rape of the planet that leaves the land completely
| unusable.
|
| Gold production is at least 10x as environmentally
| destructive as bitcoin, half of which is mined using
| renewable energy.
|
| I vote we ban coal plants and strip mining and boycott any
| country that violates the pledge. If we are being objective
| we should focus our efforts on the largest sources of
| pollution. Energy production isn't the problem. Dirty
| energy production is the problem.
|
| Since Bitcoin miners are mobile and constantly seeking the
| lowest cost electricity, if we ban dirty electricity
| production, Bitcoin actually incentivizes the production
| and development of new clean energy sources by opening up
| remote options that were not previously viable.
| 19g wrote:
| Probably recency bias, media coverage, and because for the
| resources it uses (with any source of energy), it's hard to
| see it as a better alternative to what exists currently
|
| Agriculture, fossil fuels, transportation and manufacturing
| for single use products are some of the highest order
| problems to me.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "For all you know, the worlds biggest miners are using
| renewable energy? I mean that could be theoretically
| possible."_
|
| We know they're not. Bitcoin miners seek out the cheapest
| energy, which is mostly fossil.
|
| We know that even decommissioned fossil fuel power plants
| are being reopened for this purpose.
|
| That's not some kind of SJW propaganda, you can read about
| it in the Wall Street Journal:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-miners-are-giving-
| new-l...
| bamboozled wrote:
| Solar is the cheapest form of energy generation in 2021
| [1], it's for political reasons fossil fuels are a
| cheaper.
|
| You should be more concerned that your government hasn't
| banned coal power generation.
|
| [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-01-03/solar-
| now-chea...
| pavlov wrote:
| If solar was the cheapest, then Bitcoin would be
| replacing other actually productive energy consumers and
| forcing them to fossil sources. So getting rid of Bitcoin
| would still be positive.
| bamboozled wrote:
| You can't just get rid of people doing calculations on
| computers, it's not going to happen without some pretty
| authoritarian, dystopian hell.
|
| The problem needs to be solved at the source, burning
| fossil fuels needs to be stopped, today!
| lowkey wrote:
| "We know they're not. Bitcoin miners seek out the
| cheapest energy, which is mostly fossil." - Citation
| needed
|
| My understanding is that the cheapest electricity sources
| are a result of massive excess energy available far from
| population sources. These are often renewables including
| hydro, wind, solar, nuclear and geothermal. In some cases
| older coal plants with excess capacity will be cheap in
| the short term, but these are always going to suffer from
| material operating cost per Gigawatt to pay for fuel,
| unlike renewable alternatives which mostly require
| upfront investment but not ongoing fuel expense.
|
| If dirty coal and other hydrocarbons are the problem,
| lets tax or ban those.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Even if they were all using renewables, and they're not,
| that's renewable low carbon energy that could be put to
| productive uses by industry. Bitcoin uses as much energy as
| Argentina FFS! All for a 'currency' which will never be
| used as such. We need revenue neutral carbon taxes _now_.
| When miners pay for the damage they do, we 'll see how
| quickly they move away from algorithmic busy work towards
| proof of stake.
| bamboozled wrote:
| What you see as "useful" is subjective. Bitcoin is mined
| because for some people it's useful.
| ohazi wrote:
| Because turning off cars and trucks would be a quality of
| life disaster for most people on the planet.
|
| Turning off bitcoin would immediately remove a sizable
| developed nation sized chunk of annual co2 production, and
| would negatively impact _practically nobody_ in comparison.
|
| People fixate on it because it would be a _trivially_ easy
| win.
| knuthsat wrote:
| But at this point, human emissions are irrelevant. The
| n-th order effects that will happen from an already
| predicted temperature increase will obliterate any
| savings.
|
| The tundra in Siberia holds methane equivalent to 100
| years of 2020 emissions. When that stuff starts melting
| (and it's already exploding) the bitcoin experiment will
| be a drop in the ocean.
| RobRivera wrote:
| so lets just give up, accept our fates, and kick the can.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Over my life I've seen the Overton window on this debate
| move from:
|
| > Global warming isn't real.
|
| To:
|
| > Global warming is real, but it's not our fault.
|
| To:
|
| > Global warming is our fault, but it's too expensive to
| fix.
|
| To, finally, sentiments like this. Summarized as:
|
| > Global warming is out fault and we could fix it. But
| why bother, it's too far gone already.
|
| At this point pessimism has set in. I'm just tired. COVID
| showed us that the capacity for personal sacrifice in
| western nations is very low indeed. I don't expect anyone
| will want to do anything about global warming if it
| threatens their job, hobbies, or investments. Long term
| consequences be damned.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| Isn't it like half a percent of total electricity spending
| though? So even if you had a magic wand to get rid of
| people's mining hardware, you wouldn't solve the problem. So
| why focus on Bitcoin so singularly? What's the agenda here?
| RobRivera wrote:
| you say that as if .5 % is trivial.
|
| you say that as if solutions can't be composed by aggregate
| pavlov wrote:
| It consumes more power than Argentina and has increased
| 6500% since 2015 without providing any meaningful utility
| to mankind.
|
| Bitcoin deserves to be a first-tier target for reducing
| carbon emissions. That doesn't mean we shouldn't target
| other energy consumption too.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Half a percent is a _staggering, colossal amount_ of
| energy, especially considering that the percentage of
| humans who use Bitcoin is less by orders of magnitude, and
| that it is-- let 's be honest here-- pretty much useless. I
| am utterly baffled by the suggestion that "half a percent
| of all electricity use" is not something worth being
| alarmed about.
| lucb1e wrote:
| More like 10%. Total energy use of a country in a year is
| something like 1PWh and electricity is 100TWh, those orders
| of magnitude.
|
| Edit: figured I might as well look it up and be precise.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands 900
| TWh primary energy, 115 TWh electricity.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| It's a great (if tragic) demonstration of the limits of human
| governance. We cannot do long-term (let alone multi-
| generational) planning.
|
| But maybe that's just my Western experience.
| mcculley wrote:
| Even if individual countries or cultures could do long term
| planning, myopic cultures can harm them. We would have to
| have a global EPA. We have a global Tragedy of the Commons.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| The whole political system is designed to deflect and diffuse
| popular demands, not to be responsive to them. We could
| design better political systems.
|
| But, if you want a responsive, accountable political system,
| you cannot also maintain enclaves of extreme wealth, power
| and privilege. People wouldn't put up with it.
| [deleted]
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-
| emissi...
| knodi123 wrote:
| In the famous frog-boiling experiment you're referring to, the
| frogs were actually lobotomized before they were put in the
| pot. Which makes your analogy even more accurate, IMO.
| [deleted]
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| Pay more attention to renewable energy, we are making
| significant progress over the last 10 years. Now if only we
| could get China on board so those coal mines stop increasing
| global emissions...
| remir wrote:
| People manifest in the streets because they have to put on a
| mask to stop the spread of COVID. A simple mask is seen as
| anti-freedom.
|
| Now, just so we're clear, I'm not judging these people and I
| don't want to polarize COVID and the government response in any
| ways.
|
| But if wearing a mask is seen as restrictive, imagine the
| societal changes required to _truly_ address climate change.
|
| Folks, the party is over. The response to climate change will
| make COVID measures seem like a day at the water park.
| pirate787 wrote:
| Nope. For about the same cost as the Covid stimulus we could
| have converted the entire US electrical grid to renewables.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| That's not even within an order of magnitude of being true.
| Renewables are, with some partial exceptions, not
| dispatchable energy sources - you need _massive_ amounts of
| storage and transmission capacity. Solar, for example, has
| a capacity factor in the neighborhood of 10%. That means
| that for every watt of natural gas generation you want to
| replace you need 10 watts of geographically distributed
| solar energy with storage and massively upgraded
| transmission networks to move all that power around. You
| could _maybe_ start to work on a china-style HVDC network
| with that kind of money but that 's not even close to all
| you need to integrate renewables on a massive scale.
|
| Fixing the american power grid for the challenges of the
| next 500 years is a multi-generational project that will
| cost way more than a few trillion dollars.
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| 400-1,000ppm Concentrations typical of occupied indoor spaces
| with good air exchange
|
| 1,000-2,000ppm Complaints of drowsiness and poor air.
|
| 2,000-5,000 ppm Headaches, sleepiness and stagnant, stale, stuffy
| air. Poor concentration, loss of attention, increased heart rate
| and slight nausea may also be present.
|
| 5,000 Workplace exposure limit (as 8-hour TWA) in most
| jurisdictions.
|
| >40,000 ppm Exposure may lead to serious oxygen deprivation
| resulting in permanent brain damage, coma, even death.
|
| https://www.kane.co.uk/knowledge-centre/what-are-safe-levels...
| amptorn wrote:
| Mauna Loa is not indoors.
| ijidak wrote:
| Wow. That's sobering. 1,000 PPM is not far-fetched in a few
| decades as more poor upgrade to higher carbon lifestyles.
|
| The growth curve so far has not been linear...
|
| Very interesting.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| > 250-400ppm Normal background concentration in outdoor ambient
| air
|
| So we'd expect this site to be nearer 250 given its ideal
| location away from humans and industry?
| dmurray wrote:
| The ground there sporadically goes on fire, completely
| naturally. So it might not be an "ideal" location for
| atmospheric purity.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Mauna Loa has never recorded co2 as low as 250ppm. Started at
| 315ppm in the 50s: https://www.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/l
| egacy/image/2019/J...
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Since it's located on a barren volcano at a high altitude I
| would say there is less oxygen in the air than at sea level.
| The air there should also be less affected by nearby
| emissions.
|
| They also have stats on the ratio of O2 to N2, which has been
| falling over the same period. People argue that plants will
| produce more oxygen to make up for the new CO2 in the air,
| but here we see that combustion is winning out. https://gml.n
| oaa.gov/obop/mlo/programs/coop/scripps/o2/o2.ht...
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| CO2 ppm should reduce with altitude though right?
|
| E.g. if we saw 250ppm at sea level, we'd expect to see
| around 3% reduction in ppm counts per 1000 ft altitude.
| This observatory is at 11,000ft so we'd expect 250ppm sea
| level to give us 82ppm not >400
| lutorm wrote:
| No, the "parts" in ppm reduce, but the "millions" does,
| too. It's a ratio.
|
| (There might be a tiny effect due to the fact that CO2 is
| heavier than air, so as you go up you might expect the
| CO2 to mostly have settled against the bottom of the
| atmosphere. I suspect as long as you're in the
| troposphere, there's sufficient mixing to make it
| uniform, though.)
| mturmon wrote:
| This is correct. CO2 is well-mixed, both laterally and
| vertically.
|
| Mauna Loa observatory is at about 4200 meters, or 0.6
| atmospheres. At that atmospheric height, CO2 should
| generally be within ~10ppm of the concentration anywhere
| above the atmospheric boundary layer (BL).
|
| Below the BL, CO2 can be trapped by topography or
| temperature inversions, or in general, not be as well-
| mixed vertically. The height of the BL varies with time
| and location but generally that's a few hundred meters.
|
| Well above 0.6 atmospheres -- say, 0.2 atmospheres, or >
| 12km up -- the CO2 concentration in ppm can decrease
| noticeably more.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| Yeah you're right https://www.researchgate.net/figure/In-
| situ-CO2-concentratio...
| zionic wrote:
| I guess it's good news it took a century of effort go from
| 200->420 then.
|
| Hopefully we can stop it around 600 or so.
| sa1 wrote:
| The concern is climate change, unlike indoor CO2
| concentrations.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I suspect it'll be higher than that, 700 at least
| brink wrote:
| > "The ultimate control knob on atmospheric CO2 is fossil-fuel
| emissions," said Ralph Keeling. "But we still have a long way to
| go to halt the rise, as each year more CO2 piles up in the
| atmosphere. We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and
| sustained longer than the COVID-related shutdowns of 2020."
|
| That's extreme.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Yet everyone wants to start commuting back to offices. It looks
| like 2020 didn't even have a noticeable effect on the trend.
| jjulius wrote:
| This may not be the most constructive comment on HN, but my
| initial reaction to this kind of comment is often:
|
| It is what it is; mother nature doesn't give a fuck about us
| and never will. Preventing climate change would be incredibly
| painful, as is letting it happen.
| orwin wrote:
| Yes, but one can be piloted, the other won't.
| mlindner wrote:
| Ignoring the effects on natural biodiversity, I think letting
| it happen would actually be less of an issue for humans. It's
| not that expensive to build seawalls around coastal cities.
| Crops will be grown further north and crops will grow more
| easily in higher CO2.
|
| On the other hand, stopping it would basically involve a war
| on developing countries to forcibly prevent them from
| developing further. Most developed countries have already
| leveled off their CO2 emissions or are headed downward.
|
| Increased CO2 will harm the developing world more than
| anywhere else, but those places are also the least interested
| in putting in the effort to stop the effects.
| graeme wrote:
| We actually require cuts to zero. And then negative by sucking
| carbon from the atmosphere.
|
| 2020 we simply began getting worse at a slower rate. But ANY
| emissions of fossil fuels come from outside the carbon cycle
| and make the carbon worse.
| elihu wrote:
| Compared to the seriousness of the problem I don't think it's
| extreme, but I also don't think it's quite the right approach.
| Instead of telling people to drive less, or eat less, or not
| heat their homes in the winter (which isn't going to work), we
| can transition away from fossil fuel energy as fast as we can
| and replace it with renewables.
|
| My usual (U.S. centric) suggestions when this topic comes up
| are to greatly expand solar and wind energy production, finance
| transcontinental high-voltage DC lines so that we can trade
| power with Africa/Asia/Europe and even out the day/night
| imbalance (we can keep fossil fuel plants around as an
| emergency backup and just not use them), electrify the
| interstate freeway system so that EVs can charge without
| stopping and make cross-country road trips without having to
| haul around huge batteries, and we should expand EV tax credits
| to cover conversions of existing vehicles as well as new
| vehicles.
|
| We also need more battery production, especially of
| technologies like lithium iron phosphate (or whatever replaces
| it in the future) which are good enough and aren't bottlenecked
| on expensive materials like cobalt and nickel.
|
| None of these things require people to change their behavior,
| though it would help if they did. It's probably also not enough
| to save us from pretty severe climate problems in the future,
| but at this point I think that's more-or-less unavoidable so we
| should just do the best we can right now.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Nature does not match her challenges to our abilities. There's
| no reason to expect this to be fair.
|
| It's definitely not the kind of thing where I would engage in
| hand wringing over human stupidity. It sucks and it's unfair,
| but it's the situation we have to deal with.
| brink wrote:
| I'm more referring to the nature of the proposed solution as
| being extreme. Calling for shutdowns greater than 2020 is the
| sledgehammer to society approach.
|
| Are we really so against the wall that we cannot come up with
| something better than the economically suicidal shutdowns?
| bscphil wrote:
| > But we still have a long way to go to halt the rise, as
| each year more CO2 piles up in the atmosphere. We
| ultimately need cuts that are much larger and sustained
| longer than the COVID-related shutdowns of 2020."
|
| "Cuts" means cuts in the release of new CO2, it doesn't
| mean that this has to be accomplished through shutting down
| the economy - you misunderstood the statement.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Yes, thats what happens when you ignore the problem for 70
| years, chickens come home to rootlst
| [deleted]
| tech-no-logical wrote:
| in my opinion : yes. we've been coming up with things for
| 30-40 years now, and emissions are still rising. we've had
| some kind of climate accord since 1992, and essentially
| nothing has changed with respect to fossil fuel use.
|
| on my side of the pond we've committed to a 50% reduction
| in emissions by 2030 as compared to 1990... that's just 9
| years, and we are _still_ at 1990 levels or thereabouts,
| meaning we have done essentially _nothing_ in 30 years.
|
| I'd damn well say we're against the wall.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| He's not saying we need to shut down, he's saying we need
| solutions that are equal to or greater in magnitude than a
| shutdown.
|
| CO2 emissions went down during the early pandemic, but
| quickly started climbing back towards normal again.[0] In
| 2020 overall, global emissions fell 6.4%[1]. If we
| maintained that trajectory, it still wouldn't be enough to
| stop climate change.
|
| [0]https://time.com/5943530/covid-19-co2-emissions-climate-
| chan... [1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun
| /08/carbon-d...
| ohazi wrote:
| > but it's the situation we have to deal with.
|
| We're not going to deal with it. We're going to continue
| partying for another 200 years. Then we're all going to get
| woozy and stupid. Then the population will crater. I don't
| think humanity will go away _entirely_ , but I don't see a
| reason to be optimistic about the next 500 or 1000 years.
| This is the peak.
| Loveaway wrote:
| How do you know? Humans are probably the most adaptable
| species on the planet. Not many tropical animals are able
| to survive in Antartica for example. Maybe we'll get fusion
| and AI rolling, and we have more energy then we possibly
| dream of, can de-carbonate the atmosphere and so on.
|
| The way I see it it's gonna be all about energy. There are
| absolutely insane amounts of it everywhere, and all our
| power generation is like nothing compared to what's going
| on at planetary, cosmic scales. The question is are gonna
| be able to tap into it, and make use of it? If so, all our
| problems will seem silly, but for that to happen we need to
| keep up the innovation, keep up improving technology, keep
| the economy running and don't fall into the trap of
| regressing into a dark age.
|
| If we just shut down everything and go back into the woods,
| we're definitely gonna be at the whim of whatever is going
| to happen and there will be nothing we can do about it.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I agree. There's no going back, only forward. We need
| alternative sources of energy.
| jjulius wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, slightly tangentially related; you may
| enjoy Kae Tempest's "The Book of Traps and Lessons".
| gedy wrote:
| Given that 2020 lockdowns was about as massive behavior shift we
| could hope for in the West, yet seemingly had no impact[0],
| what's the alternative to these schemes? Is the rise mostly now
| Chinese manufacturing?
|
| [0]
| https://research.noaa.gov/Portals/0/easygalleryimages/1/864/...
| lrem wrote:
| In how many places were the lockdowns more than 10% of the
| year?
| gizmo686 wrote:
| The lockdowns were targeted to reduce person to person
| contacts; not to reduce emmisions.
|
| A simmilar amount of hardship targeted at reducing emmisions
| would be far more effective at reducing emmisions (and less
| effective at reducing the spread of viral respiratory diseases)
| the_third_wave wrote:
| The rise - and continuous rise, even though anthropogenic
| CO2-emissions went down substantially during the lockdowns in
| 2020 - is largely dependent on the oceans warming up and
| outgassing CO2 [1]. Historical records from ice cores show that
| CO2 concentration lags after temperature changes - the
| concentration goes up after the temperature has gone up, and
| goes down once the temperature has gone down [2, see fig. 3
| (p.431) for the relation between CO2 concentration and
| temperature]. As long as the temperature continues to go up,
| the CO2 concentration will go up. Once the temperature has
| stopped rising the CO2 concentration will stop rising with a
| lag of a few thousand years [2, p.433, _The CO2 decrease lags
| the temperature decrease by several kyr and may be either steep
| (as at the end of interglacials 5.5 and 7.5) or more regular
| (at the end of interglacials 9.3 and 11.3)_ ].
|
| [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20413-warmer-
| oceans-r...
|
| [2] Petit, J. R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N. I.,
| Barnola, J.-M., Basile, I., ... Stievenard, M. (1999). Nature,
| 399(6735), 429-436. doi:10.1038/20859
| (https://doi.org/10.1038/20859)
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissi...
| [deleted]
| _Microft wrote:
| _This is fine._
|
| At least it cannot be that bad, can it, when we go to bed each
| night just worrying how we are going to sell meaningless products
| before meaningless deadlines to customers who do not even need
| them instead of putting our efforts into fixing our effing planet
| so our descendants will have a nice place to live in. Good night
| for now.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| Are you starting a company to solve a meaningful climate-
| related problem? Or are you pining for a giant centralized hand
| to just dictate solutions? Like what is your actual delta or
| solution?
| zizee wrote:
| It's very difficult for the free market to solve a "tragedy
| of the commons". We need the "giant centralised hand" to stop
| businesses externalizing their costs to produce the market.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| I think if the free market could solve climate change, it
| probably already would have. Clearly the more lucrative
| approach is to use the growing disaster to sell air
| conditioners and privately guarded bunkers in New Zealand. So
| please forgive me for not wanting any more companies to try
| and profit off of crises, there's not a strong track record
| of structural solutions coming from that sector.
| function_seven wrote:
| To those downvoting parent, I assume _This is fine_ is a
| reference to the dog in the burning house meme.
|
| Not sure if that changes your vote, but FYI :)
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| I'm with you... I repeatedly tell collegues of mine that I'm
| baffled society has decided (by their wallets) that my time is
| worth more than say, a climate scientist, nuclear or renewable
| energy engineer, or someone else engaged in planet saving
| technologies.
|
| [Context]: I mostly reverse engineer malware and embedded
| systems. Most of what I do is malware for phones... and most of
| this malware is packaged as stupid games that nobody should be
| playing anyways. But hey... I get paid well. Good night for
| now.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Society doesn't decide shit.
|
| People need to stop thinking about the free market as some
| kind of oracle. It's not. It's a collection of feedback loops
| between greedy optimizers. It drives people down the local
| gradient of profitability, which has only a minimal
| relationship with long-term social utility. It can, and will,
| drive us all off a cliff if there's enough money to be made
| stepping off the edge.
|
| And yes, I'm with you here. I just don't see it as society
| deciding. If asked, most people will also be baffled how it
| is you and me get more than a climate scientist or a nuclear
| engineer. They also can't directly express their individual
| preferences on this using their wallets, because the market
| isn't structured in a way to allow that.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| A more informed customer base makes more informed
| decisions. So over time it can be said that the market does
| actually choose things. Like how if more people want
| products sourced from ethical materials suppliers, the
| trend becomes more products being sourced from ethical
| materials suppliers.
|
| I couldn't care less about good software engineers making
| more than "climate scientists" or "nuclear engineers"
| because those lines are more blurred than ever. If you're
| in one of those roles and you can't code, you'll be
| obsolete within a matter of a few years.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _if more people want products sourced from ethical
| materials suppliers, the trend becomes more products
| being sourced from ethical materials suppliers._
|
| Or rather, the cheaper option is chosen: companies just
| _lie_. This is what actually happened.
|
| > _A more informed customer base makes more informed
| decisions._
|
| The market has already worked around this. We've created
| the _marketing industry_. The business world has learned
| how to bamboozle customers at scale. We 're at the stage
| where spending a marginal dollar on marketing has a
| better ROI than spending it on improving the product.
|
| > _I couldn't care less about good software engineers
| making more than "climate scientists" or "nuclear
| engineers" because those lines are more blurred than
| ever. If you're in one of those roles and you can't code,
| you'll be obsolete within a matter of a few years._
|
| And I do care, because while I agree that coding is
| becoming essential for productive scientific and
| engineering work, it's not those people who get the good
| salaries. Guess what programmers are getting the most
| money? The ones building technology for _advertising_.
| Because of course they do. See my previous point: we 've
| created an industry that can play customers like a
| fiddle, undoing the main feature of a free market that
| made it socially beneficial.
| function_seven wrote:
| Kind of amazing how your third point so neatly wrapped
| around to the first one.
|
| I've become tremendously cynical in the past decade
| regarding all the ecofriendly stuff I'm supposed to be
| doing. It always seems to come out that the effort I was
| committing to Thing X turned out to be either worthless
| or even worse than that.
|
| Recycle my plastic bottles? Nope, they're just getting
| dumped into the Yangtze River. (I put the bottles in the
| trash now.)
|
| Okay, but my sink faucet no longer drips, so that's good
| right? I guess, but that one container of almonds just
| wiped out whatever yearly water savings I achieved with
| the repair.
|
| I would consider buying carbon offsets if I had any faith
| at all that they really truly represented a net reduction
| in atmospheric CO2. I don't have that faith. Way too easy
| to launder or fabricate.
|
| It reminds me of the 90s, when grocery stores switched
| from "forest-destroying" paper bags to "ecofriendly"
| plastic bags. Then we all did a 180 on that. Now I'm
| paying for the bags--also they use roughly 3x the amount
| of plastic--and I still use them twice (once for the
| items, once as a trashcan liner), just like I did before.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| Convince the market that you have a solution to a problem and
| they'll reward you. Plenty of climate-focused companies out
| there looking to hire software engineers.
|
| If you're not happy with the employment that gives you the
| income to pursue your hobbies and fund side ventures, why not
| join one of those climate companies or start one?
| lutorm wrote:
| _the highest level since accurate measurements began 63 years
| ago_
|
| Not to detract from the seriousness of the increasing CO2 level,
| but doesn't _every_ year set a new record for CO2 level?
| top_post wrote:
| Right, which is the problem.
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