I hate this feeling of hopelessness regarding global warming. It feels like even if you were a billionaire/massive corp, at some point you would say "wow we should stop, or else there won't even be a world to spend this money in".
I think it's partially related to something akin to the prisoner's dilemma: it's a world-wide problem, and "we" might not want to take the financial hit for being the first in leading the cause.
I spent quite some time in South-East Asia the past few years, and when you see the sheer amount of boats that just dump all their trash in the ocean, and the sheer lack of awareness of the issue, it makes you hopeless. I come home, diligently recycling my trash, and I can't help but wonder whether this is all just a show, and not addressing any of the core issues that are needed to fix this.
No problem, it's when something can be improved when everyone does the right thing together, but nobody has any incentive to do the right thing alone. Exactly like dumping trash everywhere, if you do the right thing alone, you're just inconveniencing yourself by spending money to dispose of trash properly while everyone else dumps it wherever.
The tragedy of the commons can be modeled as a game, and the matrix can be similar to the one from the prisoner's dilemma, but they're not exactly the same. For example, if you properly recycle and I just dump my trash, I'm not better off than if we just both dumped our trash, which is what happens with the prisoner's dilemma. Basically, the prisoners have an incentive to deceive each other, whereas in the tragedy of the commons, you generally don't.
Is flying really that bad compared to ocean pollution? I feel like flying is overall a pretty efficient means of transport, everything is geared towards efficiency.
Consider a world where every human traveled by plane like you do and where also every human used recycling as you do. Would you prefer living in that world?
> Consider a world where every human traveled by plane like you do and where also every human used recycling as you do. Would you prefer living in that world?
According to the above article, one would prefer that.
> The trend has continued so that in 2010, flying burned just 2,691 BTU per passenger mile—an improvement of 74 percent since 1970. That was 43 percent better than driving the average car, which gets about 21.5 miles per gallon (4,218 BTU per passenger mile)
By emitting that large amount of co2, you are disrupting the ocean co2 flux, reducing o2 available and causing acidification. The warming caused by the thermal capacity of the co2 melts the polar ice , cooling the oceans and reducing their salinity. Plastic is relatively a small problem.
Agreed, but air travel is only 5% of global emissions. There is much more low hanging fruit in electric vehicles and moving building HVAC to electricity (AC and heat pumps). Eliminate natural gas and fuel oil for heating, eliminate petroleum for moving people and goods around, and start feeding cows seaweed to reduce their methane emissions by 95%.
Air travel research has shown biofuels are production ready, but it’s not cost competitive yet, although that’s a market failure through the externalization of emission costs.
Well, it's actually that I spent 2.5 years in the area non-stop, and came back last year pickup up my habits again.
Having said that, I agree with aircraft pollution. And this indeed implies that I recycling is silly compared to other things I do. So this only fuels the apathy I'm starting to feel towards this whole thing.
> I can't help but wonder whether this is all just a show
Do you know that the garbage that is "recycled" in the USA used to be sent (until Dec 2017) directly to China? This is one of the scams of the century. Nobody knows what China does with the material they cannot use, and in fact they just decided not to take it anymore.
It is too late to worry about going first. A great many countries have already stepped up.
Recycling isnt much help. Putting a few meters of solar on your roof is far more important. Not taking a first-class flight to vacation on the other side of the planet is also good. Installing an entire roof of solar, and making sure your grandparents vote against the coal lobby, that's the best anyone can do atm.
It's more that such a commitment goes against the incentives laid down by a means of production that is enforced almost globally by both treaty and military might.
Reality is simpler - it's in no one's (perceived, short-term) best interest to be the first to spend money, material and manpower on fixing this, because the moment they start, they'll get eaten alive by their competitors. This applies at the level of individuals, small businesses, large businesses and governments alike.
It's a garden variety coordination problem - but it seems that, with technology successfully solving most of our non-social problems, lack of coordination is what underlies all the important issues humanity faces these days.
We didn't have to give up cars for the ozone layer, though. In fact, no one had to give up anything, because they invented new types of aerosol propellents.
We don't have to give up cars to fix global warming either. We've invented new types of automobiles and fuel for them (electric cars, solar/wind energy)
It's just going to take way longer to switch over, since those things are way larger parts of everyone's life and economics than hairspray was.
Not only is it possible, the cost to do so will continue to decline as renewables deployed scale up. The cheaper electricity/renewables get, the cheaper it gets to sequester that excess CO2 back into the ground.
"We fixed the ozone layer and stopped acid rain. We can fix this. It just takes commitment."
That's not a good comparison - ozone layer and acid rain were caused by very specific externalities that were relatively easily substituted with "better" ones that didn't cause (for instance) ozone holes and acid rain.
Carbon, on the other hand, is the least common denominator of human activity - so much so that even our breath produces it. I don't see any possible patterns of human existence on the earth that are ex-carbon.
Carbon output is a simple function of population in a way that ozone and sulfur are not.
w/r/t the tragedy of the commons... The thing that I'm a little afraid to say out loud is that I don't see how any of this is solved with our current political structures. Sovereign nations? Democracies? At some point -- when the sh#$ really hits the fan -- these structures are going to seem like idealistic but ineffective luxuries. I suppose catastrophe (my sense is there will be no need to engineer it) could spur inspired alignment; or some kind of global consciousness awakening event (we're waiting, Jesus 2.0/Whatever).
The long arch of hope seems pretty hopeless from an individual's perspective at this moment in time, so much so that I actively try (and fail) _not_ to think about this. I can't imagine what folks at, say, the pentagon, are planning out who spend all day obsessing on it. They must have some pretty dark scenarios mapped out.
Simply put, we have grown to the size of our resource container and that container is about to shrink. We're far from ready. The species will likely eek it's way through. Civilization? Not so much.
The oceans are by far the most important eco system on the planet, they have tremendous capacity for healing and regeneration but once that gets pushed too far there may be no way back. And without the oceans alive the world will be hungry.
There are many bad things the Trump administration might be remembered for domestically but internationally the most visible decision was the withdrawal from the climate change accords and it may eventually make the USA a pariah state no matter what military might they have.
Wouldn't there also be more different fish now especially in places that used to be covered by ice? Sure, some species might die off but you might get more new species as well. Some new fish perhaps that is good at living in lower oxygen concentration. Also, the fish that lived in the tropics can move to subtropics and so on.
I see it as more of a change that's not really bad or good. As Joe Carlin once said, the Earth will be fine.
The adaptations you're talking about happen over centuries.
The changes you're talking about are happening over decades.
These changes will not be limited to just the oceans.
And the main takeaway point from that George Carlin clip that I can find is that the planet will be fine because people won't be. I can only assume you didn't bother to watch it before posting it for others to watch.
It has to be a threat to life. Otherwise, no fungi that had potential for such energy consumption would have been selected for.
Same with fish or birds. With fish, the ones that can live in a slightly lower O2 environment will be selected for and survive better than the ones who can't. Those that can't would die off because they won't be able to compete as well.
It's George Carlin, not joe, and he was a commedian - a good one - not a scientist, and his point, in case you missed it was that humans won't necessarily be around for the earth healing part II.
Earth will be fine, but we, you, me all the other humans, need earth to be healthy so that we can continue to exist, as apex predators we are extremely dependent on the lower branches of the foodchain working properly and all our hydroponics tech won't save us if we don't have oxygen in the air to live off.
Keep in mind that the atmospheric oxygen is there to a very large extent because the oceans act as the planet's lungs.
Lower oxygen in the oceans means less life in the oceans and ultimately less oxygen in the atmosphere, which affects all life on earth, including us. So unless you feel a planet with mostly just plant and insect life is 'fine' you probably need to review that piece a couple of times to get the real impact of it, in which Carlin's prediction is that we won't make it.
> as apex predators we are extremely dependent on the lower branches of the foodchain working properly
Would you mind elaborating on this? It's not clear to me how we would be less dependent on lower branches of the food chain if we weren't apex predators.
The key is extremely. As an example, DDT sprayed to get rid of certain insects killed off a large number of birds at the top of the food chain, such trouble tends to concentrate. So poison the lower levels and the intermediate levels might survive but the apex species will suffer the most.
Oh, if you're referring to biological magnification then yes, but that's not the problem we're talking about, right? We're talking about global warming, which leads to species dying off (due to habitat loss, etc.) rather than staying alive but accumulating toxins... that's where I don't get how things would be any different if we were lower in the food chain?
We have many more points of dependency. So a malfunction in the machinery of life is more likely to be disastrous the further up the pyramid one lives. At the apex of the pyramid, we are dependent on the entire pyramid being structurally sound. And consider: we are already in the midst of the worst die-off of species since the dinosaurs. So the pyramid is already crumbling.
> We have many more points of dependency. So a malfunction in the machinery of life is more likely to be disastrous the further up the pyramid one lives.
You're just repeating the claim, and again, I do not follow the logic. Again, my question is: why would it be less disastrous if we were lower in the food chain? It would help to give an example of a species at a lower position in our food web and explain why, if we took its position, we'd be better off.
I'm not "just repeating the claim". If you're at the bottom of the pyramid, you only need sunlight and water. If half the animals die off, you're fine. The higher up you are, the more species below on which you are dependent. You're only dependent on what's below, not what's above. With us at the top, a 50% die-off would be catastrophic.
In that case I believe you're saying something else, not answering the question I had asked. The sentence I replied to was this:
> as apex predators we are extremely dependent on the lower branches of the foodchain working properly
Again, I repeat my question: if we were lower in the food web, wouldn't we still depend on branches of the food web lower than you? That seems to be true regardless of where you are on the food web. In fact, wouldn't we be more susceptible to harm if we had fewer possible sources of food? One would expect that the fewer alternatives we have, the worse off we would be, right?
It's the exact same effect but through a different path. Thinnk of it as a house, no matter where the house develops problems you'll always see it in the roof.
Not sure I understand the analogy. What classes of problems a house can develop structurally that are primarily visible standing on the roof, before the whole thing collapses? Or do you mean that even a partial collapse always affects things above it?
Any change in the structure of a house will typically affect the roofline. That's why checking the roofline is a very good thing to do when purchasing a house, if the roof is straight that is an important data point about walls and foundation supporting that roof. A sagging roof is a sure sign of problems in the rest of the building, rarely a sign of trouble with the roof itself.
I understand your logic about the house but I don't see why it is an apt analogy. It would help to explain what kinds of problems you are imagining for the house and what they could correspond to in the food web, both at the lower and upper levels.
I posted the clip because it's a lighthearted argument about the reasons we're pursuing environmentalism.
I think a lot of current hysteria it is driven by petroleum politics and geopolitics. Otherwise, both parties in US government would have been pro-environmentalism. Try to think of why someone might have a different position given that they understand the science.
Finally, regarding humans surviving. What is the ultimate number of humans that should exist on earth? How much environmental damage or "change" is allowed to sustain these humans or for "progress" to occur? How many children should humans be allowed to have? Who gets to decide these things?
Should humans be allowed to develop new industries at the expense of the environment?
Some people think that it's best to live in tribes and forego all technology. Some are content living with current tech advancement and keeping population at about what it is now. Others think humans should spread to as many planets as possible.
My point is we should stop worrying about the "environment", because what we really mean is for our great grandchildren to have the same environment as us.
I'm not sure if I'll have children. If I do, I'm not sure whether I'd want them to live in the same environment. I'm perfectly content living in a city where there are no animals for example.
Ultimately, if some other people on another continent decide to reproduce like crazy, it would kill all our current efforts with environment preservation and we won't be able to do anything about it.
So not only is it likely that it's impossible to stop these changes, but I wouldn't care if we stop them at all. To me it seems that the only reason anyone can possibly care about these things is geopolitics.
> I think unless we start blowing up Earth with nuclear weapons on purpose, it will be fine.
What you think is not so important. What the worlds scientists specialising in that field think is important. If you feel that short of nuclear global destruction our impact is negligible then that contradicts just about all peer reviewed research.
> If humans are gone today, the CO2 levels will go back to normal pretty quickly with plenty of animals surviving all over the place.
That does not align with my understanding of the word 'fine', but seems to imply a rather apocalyptic ending for the human race, something that we might do better to avoid.
The point is, nobody really gives a damn about Earth itself, and why should we? It's a rock.
What we care about is us, humans. When we say "save the planet", what we mean is "save the ecosystem that's letting us live here, and enjoy that life". If we break things and die as a result, sure, something else will live. But we don't care about that something else, we care about us.
It's a stupid shorthand, but for some reason people appreciate the fake humility of saying it's about Earth, not about us.
I'm so tired of hearing this empty phrase being used. Sure it was fun as a punchline but move along already. It's such a derailment of the discussion. It doesn't state what we mean by "earth" - is it the rock, the ecosystem, life itself? And it implies that the "earth" that is fine is the one that we actually should care about. I have no idea, because the way it's used is not really falsifiable and it's not really anything but a rhetorical trick.
Not sure why you're tired of it since I haven't heard this argument used much.
Regardless, when I say Earth, I mean the rock and likely ecosystems that currently exist and might develop on it. I think these things cannot be easily separated that's why Earth is used.
Nobody mentioned reducing pollution and greenhouse emission is the best way to help the situation so I will -- non-polluting alternatives to flying, eating meat, heating and cooling (I'm surprised how many people heat their homes in the winter so they can walk around in shorts), packaged food. Having fewer children.
As a community, HN seems to think nuclear energy is easy while carpooling or flying less are misguided wastes of effort.
> As a community, HN seems to think nuclear energy is easy while carpooling or flying less are misguided wastes of effort.
Yes, because it's the truth. Knowing that reflects understanding.
It's orders of magnitude easier to design[0] a nuclear reactor than it is to get a meaningful number of people to voluntarily refrain from flying, or even driving cars. Getting lots of people to agree on something, especially when they have strong short-term incentives for not following through on that agreement, is a near-impossible thing.
Pretty much the only way to tackle coordination problems (without going full-authoritarian, one dictator to rule the world) is to develop technologies and strategies that reduce the "activation energy" required for people to coordinate on an issue.
We won't get ourselves out of this mess by appeals to our shared human heritage, because responsibility for the planet always takes a backseat when one's tired and has to choose between 20 minutes in a car or 1 hour in a bus to pick up their daughter from school.
--
[0] - and build it; but notice where pretty much all the problems with building a nuclear plant are - getting the local population to agree to it.
That's an interesting perspective, and one I hadn't considered before. I have to admit that it only fuels my fatalism. If people can't be convinced not to (e.g.) throw their trash out the window, then I can't help but despair.
I wish I could tell you otherwise; I sometimes try to believe it, but then I go outside to intermingle with the general population, and all of this is plainly visible.
Sometimes I wonder, who are those people who don't give a damn and just dump garbage wherever they please. I personally don't know any of them (or at least I don't know I know). But then I realize that current population levels mean we all live in our own filter bubbles. I did a back-of-the-napkin math recently and realized that personally, I've meaningfully interacted with at most 0.1% of people in the city I live in. In other words, I don't know a first thing about 99.9% of people I live next to. This probably explains why everyone seems so surprised come election days, or when they start discussing anything on a mainstream Internet portal.
All of this suggests civilization is a fragile thing, and the only structure and semblance of stability it has is thanks to systemic incentives (I wonder how our streets would look like if you couldn't be fined for littering). There's too many of us, we don't know one another, and we can't agree on shit, unless indirectly compelled by self-interest. I think the only way to achieve some large-scale coordination is to work on the incentives and the environment in which they apply, but that itself is a hard thing - especially that for any change you'd like to make, there will be those who profit off status quo and want to oppose you.
Really, designing a new nuclear reactor is trivial in comparison.
This is where public policy, international agreements (with teeth), and other such things come into play, as they have the potential to modify the dynamics and incentives driving the harmful activity.
Conscious consumption doesn't work. It ignores financial incentives, and we know how that story plays out. In particular, companies have a fiduciary responsibility to exploit resources for shareholder gain. Until that problem is addressed, we're headed for disaster.
An important topic, but can we at least have some mention of what we can do to improve oxygen levels in the oceans (aside from reducing the level of pollution, which is the obvious but slowest to implement solution). Surely there's something that could be done to tackle this in a more immediate manner? Are there plants within the ocean ecosystem that convert carbon dioxide to oxygen?
Would it help to pump a lot of air down tubes with additonal LEDs to bring light- and thus generate a algea bloom sending the C02 back to where it came?
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[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 52.6 ms ] threadI spent quite some time in South-East Asia the past few years, and when you see the sheer amount of boats that just dump all their trash in the ocean, and the sheer lack of awareness of the issue, it makes you hopeless. I come home, diligently recycling my trash, and I can't help but wonder whether this is all just a show, and not addressing any of the core issues that are needed to fix this.
The reason I mentioned that is that I figured there were two outcomes:
- be rich/save money now, and get a possible competitive edge over other countries
- invest in your future, long-term assuming other countries do the same
> I spent quite some time in South-East Asia
> I come home, diligently recycling my trash
Not saying you shouldn't recycle your trash, but your flights are much more impactful for the environment than your trash.
Plastic in the oceans, now that’s a mess.
(I too feel conflicted about plane travel and it's long term impact.)
According to the above article, one would prefer that.
> The trend has continued so that in 2010, flying burned just 2,691 BTU per passenger mile—an improvement of 74 percent since 1970. That was 43 percent better than driving the average car, which gets about 21.5 miles per gallon (4,218 BTU per passenger mile)
By emitting that large amount of co2, you are disrupting the ocean co2 flux, reducing o2 available and causing acidification. The warming caused by the thermal capacity of the co2 melts the polar ice , cooling the oceans and reducing their salinity. Plastic is relatively a small problem.
Air travel research has shown biofuels are production ready, but it’s not cost competitive yet, although that’s a market failure through the externalization of emission costs.
The book also remarks upon how a (theoretical) revival of ocean liners would actually be worse.
Having said that, I agree with aircraft pollution. And this indeed implies that I recycling is silly compared to other things I do. So this only fuels the apathy I'm starting to feel towards this whole thing.
Do you know that the garbage that is "recycled" in the USA used to be sent (until Dec 2017) directly to China? This is one of the scams of the century. Nobody knows what China does with the material they cannot use, and in fact they just decided not to take it anymore.
Recycling isnt much help. Putting a few meters of solar on your roof is far more important. Not taking a first-class flight to vacation on the other side of the planet is also good. Installing an entire roof of solar, and making sure your grandparents vote against the coal lobby, that's the best anyone can do atm.
That´s exactly what is going on.
https://cartoons.bobmankoff.com/52630
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
It's a garden variety coordination problem - but it seems that, with technology successfully solving most of our non-social problems, lack of coordination is what underlies all the important issues humanity faces these days.
See also http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ for an in-depth discussion of coordination problems.
We are never going to fix this.
Never is a long time.
It's just going to take way longer to switch over, since those things are way larger parts of everyone's life and economics than hairspray was.
ozone layer: stop emitting CFCs, they'll decompose over decades and ozone concentrations will rise again
climate change: just stop emitting carbon and...
no wait, we're still locked into centuries of rising ocean levels and temperatures even if we lowered everything to zero right now.
It would take actively extracting CO2 from the atmosphere at very very large scale to reverse the effects.
We need more renewables faster :/
That's not a good comparison - ozone layer and acid rain were caused by very specific externalities that were relatively easily substituted with "better" ones that didn't cause (for instance) ozone holes and acid rain.
Carbon, on the other hand, is the least common denominator of human activity - so much so that even our breath produces it. I don't see any possible patterns of human existence on the earth that are ex-carbon.
Carbon output is a simple function of population in a way that ozone and sulfur are not.
The long arch of hope seems pretty hopeless from an individual's perspective at this moment in time, so much so that I actively try (and fail) _not_ to think about this. I can't imagine what folks at, say, the pentagon, are planning out who spend all day obsessing on it. They must have some pretty dark scenarios mapped out.
Simply put, we have grown to the size of our resource container and that container is about to shrink. We're far from ready. The species will likely eek it's way through. Civilization? Not so much.
There are many bad things the Trump administration might be remembered for domestically but internationally the most visible decision was the withdrawal from the climate change accords and it may eventually make the USA a pariah state no matter what military might they have.
Wouldn't there also be more different fish now especially in places that used to be covered by ice? Sure, some species might die off but you might get more new species as well. Some new fish perhaps that is good at living in lower oxygen concentration. Also, the fish that lived in the tropics can move to subtropics and so on.
I see it as more of a change that's not really bad or good. As Joe Carlin once said, the Earth will be fine.
Here is the clip: https://youtu.be/EjmtSkl53h4
The changes you're talking about are happening over decades.
These changes will not be limited to just the oceans.
And the main takeaway point from that George Carlin clip that I can find is that the planet will be fine because people won't be. I can only assume you didn't bother to watch it before posting it for others to watch.
This is in comparison to fish, in which adaptations take a longer time, where the decrease in oxygen is a direct threat to life.
Same with fish or birds. With fish, the ones that can live in a slightly lower O2 environment will be selected for and survive better than the ones who can't. Those that can't would die off because they won't be able to compete as well.
This adaptation can happen within a decade.
Earth will be fine, but we, you, me all the other humans, need earth to be healthy so that we can continue to exist, as apex predators we are extremely dependent on the lower branches of the foodchain working properly and all our hydroponics tech won't save us if we don't have oxygen in the air to live off.
Keep in mind that the atmospheric oxygen is there to a very large extent because the oceans act as the planet's lungs.
Lower oxygen in the oceans means less life in the oceans and ultimately less oxygen in the atmosphere, which affects all life on earth, including us. So unless you feel a planet with mostly just plant and insect life is 'fine' you probably need to review that piece a couple of times to get the real impact of it, in which Carlin's prediction is that we won't make it.
Would you mind elaborating on this? It's not clear to me how we would be less dependent on lower branches of the food chain if we weren't apex predators.
You're just repeating the claim, and again, I do not follow the logic. Again, my question is: why would it be less disastrous if we were lower in the food chain? It would help to give an example of a species at a lower position in our food web and explain why, if we took its position, we'd be better off.
> as apex predators we are extremely dependent on the lower branches of the foodchain working properly
Again, I repeat my question: if we were lower in the food web, wouldn't we still depend on branches of the food web lower than you? That seems to be true regardless of where you are on the food web. In fact, wouldn't we be more susceptible to harm if we had fewer possible sources of food? One would expect that the fewer alternatives we have, the worse off we would be, right?
I think a lot of current hysteria it is driven by petroleum politics and geopolitics. Otherwise, both parties in US government would have been pro-environmentalism. Try to think of why someone might have a different position given that they understand the science.
Finally, regarding humans surviving. What is the ultimate number of humans that should exist on earth? How much environmental damage or "change" is allowed to sustain these humans or for "progress" to occur? How many children should humans be allowed to have? Who gets to decide these things? Should humans be allowed to develop new industries at the expense of the environment?
Some people think that it's best to live in tribes and forego all technology. Some are content living with current tech advancement and keeping population at about what it is now. Others think humans should spread to as many planets as possible.
My point is we should stop worrying about the "environment", because what we really mean is for our great grandchildren to have the same environment as us.
I'm not sure if I'll have children. If I do, I'm not sure whether I'd want them to live in the same environment. I'm perfectly content living in a city where there are no animals for example.
Ultimately, if some other people on another continent decide to reproduce like crazy, it would kill all our current efforts with environment preservation and we won't be able to do anything about it.
So not only is it likely that it's impossible to stop these changes, but I wouldn't care if we stop them at all. To me it seems that the only reason anyone can possibly care about these things is geopolitics.
If we go, all vertebrates go too. At least all cat and bigger sized.
Life will survive, but I would not call if "fine". Is it still fine if it's only microscopic life? When it stops being fine?
I think unless we start blowing up Earth with nuclear weapons on purpose, it will be fine.
If humans are gone today, the CO2 levels will go back to normal pretty quickly with plenty of animals surviving all over the place.
But dinosaurs clearly are not.
> I think unless we start blowing up Earth with nuclear weapons on purpose, it will be fine.
What you think is not so important. What the worlds scientists specialising in that field think is important. If you feel that short of nuclear global destruction our impact is negligible then that contradicts just about all peer reviewed research.
> If humans are gone today, the CO2 levels will go back to normal pretty quickly with plenty of animals surviving all over the place.
That does not align with my understanding of the word 'fine', but seems to imply a rather apocalyptic ending for the human race, something that we might do better to avoid.
What we care about is us, humans. When we say "save the planet", what we mean is "save the ecosystem that's letting us live here, and enjoy that life". If we break things and die as a result, sure, something else will live. But we don't care about that something else, we care about us.
It's a stupid shorthand, but for some reason people appreciate the fake humility of saying it's about Earth, not about us.
I'm so tired of hearing this empty phrase being used. Sure it was fun as a punchline but move along already. It's such a derailment of the discussion. It doesn't state what we mean by "earth" - is it the rock, the ecosystem, life itself? And it implies that the "earth" that is fine is the one that we actually should care about. I have no idea, because the way it's used is not really falsifiable and it's not really anything but a rhetorical trick.
Regardless, when I say Earth, I mean the rock and likely ecosystems that currently exist and might develop on it. I think these things cannot be easily separated that's why Earth is used.
Well if that's part of "Earth" then "Earth will be fine" is a lie.
Humans are going to die off at some point anyway. Why does it matter if it's 3 generations from now VS 300 VS 3000? You won't be there to see it.
"Meh, dinosaurs have come and gone. The Earth will be fine."
"...To combat this, we need budget. Starting this year, your tax will increase by five percent."
"Murder! Fire! Revolution! How dare you!"
...happens all the time.
No worries. ;P
You're funnier than Carlin. Congratulations.
Your totally unnecessary commentary added nothing.
As a community, HN seems to think nuclear energy is easy while carpooling or flying less are misguided wastes of effort.
Yes, because it's the truth. Knowing that reflects understanding.
It's orders of magnitude easier to design[0] a nuclear reactor than it is to get a meaningful number of people to voluntarily refrain from flying, or even driving cars. Getting lots of people to agree on something, especially when they have strong short-term incentives for not following through on that agreement, is a near-impossible thing.
Pretty much the only way to tackle coordination problems (without going full-authoritarian, one dictator to rule the world) is to develop technologies and strategies that reduce the "activation energy" required for people to coordinate on an issue.
We won't get ourselves out of this mess by appeals to our shared human heritage, because responsibility for the planet always takes a backseat when one's tired and has to choose between 20 minutes in a car or 1 hour in a bus to pick up their daughter from school.
--
[0] - and build it; but notice where pretty much all the problems with building a nuclear plant are - getting the local population to agree to it.
Sometimes I wonder, who are those people who don't give a damn and just dump garbage wherever they please. I personally don't know any of them (or at least I don't know I know). But then I realize that current population levels mean we all live in our own filter bubbles. I did a back-of-the-napkin math recently and realized that personally, I've meaningfully interacted with at most 0.1% of people in the city I live in. In other words, I don't know a first thing about 99.9% of people I live next to. This probably explains why everyone seems so surprised come election days, or when they start discussing anything on a mainstream Internet portal.
All of this suggests civilization is a fragile thing, and the only structure and semblance of stability it has is thanks to systemic incentives (I wonder how our streets would look like if you couldn't be fined for littering). There's too many of us, we don't know one another, and we can't agree on shit, unless indirectly compelled by self-interest. I think the only way to achieve some large-scale coordination is to work on the incentives and the environment in which they apply, but that itself is a hard thing - especially that for any change you'd like to make, there will be those who profit off status quo and want to oppose you.
Really, designing a new nuclear reactor is trivial in comparison.
Not that this makes it easy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoplankton