Ask HN: How do we fight the existential threat of climate change?

For HN crowd I think the best thing we can do is develop platforms and technology that facilitate and encourage unbiased and clearly presented news and information discovery by the masses.

Unltimately, even the best idea is useless without buy-in by the masses and policy makers. Right now most people simply don't understand or accept the situation either due to lack of factual and audience-appropriate information or due to lack of information sources they trust that present the facts to them. Like it or not,tech is how information spreads and technologists have a lot of say in the outcome of this.

Tech aside,like many other factual information, climate change is presented as a fact people have to accept along with other scientific beliefs. What I mean is, people who are not confident in their own ability to objectively assess the facts rely on the trustworthiness of the people presenting the facts. Climate change should not be presented as an "Us vs Them" issue (obviously) and it needs to be presented in a way that does not challenge any other commonly held beliefs people might have. You can't challenge someone's sacred beliefs (whatever that might be) and also present factual information they're not able to independently verify and expect them to accept the latter and reject the former,it just doesn't work that way. This is mostly why I suggested neutral platforms that instill a strong level of confidence for every audience are needed.

Unfortunately, all I see is climate change being presented like any other scientific fact and on platforms that don't have the confidence of the majority of audiences. You need everyone from the cowboy rancher in texas to the lumberjack in brazil working on cutting down trees in the amazon to buy in.

Solutions like mass reforestation by essentially bombing the planet with seed planting pods seem promising and countries are increasingly switching to renewable energy sources. It all just needs mass buy-in so the solutions can take effect before it's too late.

Similar recent thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20353814

Work to get politicians who will fight climate change elected. Individual lifestyle changes will do very little (though they still should be done!), but mobilizing the resources of the government can make a real difference. I feel like this is obvious, but it seems like many don’t seem to understand it

Sorry, we're too busy changing the world to be concerned with climate change.

On an individual level : - plant trees - consume only the necessary - limit car, planes, trains transportation - Reconnect to the cycles of the earth

On a collective level : - policies against gas emissions - Laws: Same as speed limitation for cars, limit energy consumption per habitant - true information/news/education - Bans of polluting products ( plastics, heavy metals, ...etc ) - Change obsolete, unnecessary, inefficient and polluting tech

Hack direct air capture hardware.

Establish a growth curve for air capture like Moore's Law.

Do mashups. AI + climate, Biotech + climate, VR + climate.

Be curious.

A recent news article suggested that planting 1 trillion trees would address the issue. It's not trivial though.

I doubt there are many climate scientists on here, and I am certainly not one, but the problem as I see it is that the public and industry generally are resistant to subtractive solutions: driving less, going on fewer flights, carbon taxes and so on. Therefore the best solutions are additive: planting billions of trees and investing in industries that reduce carbon emission. Planting trees in particular is something that is- a) simple b) fairly cheap c) has a range of other benefits such as helping to improve air quality and reduce water runoff, preventing floods. d) helps wildlife more generally

I know it's more complicated than that, but that's a good place to start. Perhaps even pay people to grow trees on disused land.

My opinion might be unpopular, but I think there’s very little worthwhile activity a lone individual can do. Making progress to mitigate climate change will require long-term coordination of governments, elites, executives and militaries that just hasn’t been supported by the evidence of human sociopolitical history. Meanwhile, climate change is a topic receiving untold attention all the time and hundreds of billions in funding annually.

There’s a sincere opportunity cost if you don’t put your attention towards other causes that may be of equal importance in terms of preventable suffering, yet may have much more straightforward solutions due to lessened need for sociopolitical coordination or expensive consumer behavioral changes (such as focusing on simple ways to prevent diseases w/ Against Malaria or Deworm the World or others, or animal welfare charities like The Humane League).

However, taking it for granted that one should still focus on climate change, the main things I have come to conclude are:

- advocating use of reusable materials for cups, bottles, bags, etc., is a total waste of time & will amount to virtually no positive impact, while risking alienating people away from the cause.

- personally conserving in any extreme way is likewise useless and you’ll just be living a worse life for nothing, while also risking alienating people.

- most municipal recycling is a total scam, and frankly we’re not in any danger of running out of landfill space. It’s just a feel-good distraction akin to “Showing that you care” by Hanson regarding medical spending.

- Finally, it seems that one of the simplest things humans can do to sequester carbon at a global scale is reforestation. While probably it will require governments to do this at the necessary scale, possibly the only useful action an individual can take is to find the most cost-efficient way to donate money to a charity or organization that plants and protects trees at a very large scale.

sIMplE.. we spend more time, talent, and $ to send missions to other dead planets.

Bill Majer said it better: https://youtu.be/CWarpTWk_jg

this cartoon says it too: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5-lDJWCUAAwfya.jpg

Nuclear. Lots of it. Hundreds of them.

Carbon pricing at about $50-100 per ton of CO2. And something for methane. This could help with a switch from fossil fuel to renewables and provide money for things like reforestation. As an individual you can campaign for policies like that that are economically efficient providing the best climate outcome per dollar cost.

With solar and batteries already falling below fossil prices plus a tax on fossil fuel I'm optimistic a big change could be made without that much lifestyle cost.

I'm wondering: how much energy we could save if magically all our Python, Ruby, PHP websites appear rewritten in Rust or Go. Datacenters use a lot of energy: improving performance of interpreter to match efficiency of compiled ones would be worthy?

Probably stop enabling sociopathic billionaires. Develop tools that deepen democracy. Don’t develop tools for Mark Zuckerberg.

An underlying problem is oligarchs that strongly influence the bribed politicians and government officials to continue taxpayer support for fossil fuels.

Teach people about whats realy going on. For example: CO2 is not same as CO2. Sounds weird, maybe stupid, but its a fact. Also never saw people talking about CO2e. Like its not existing. There are different types of carbons, also of dioxides. Pubchem, shows me about 15 hits. While americans talked about antrophogenic clouds or cirrusclouds from contrails, since more than 20 years ago. Also in their cloudatlas.

The germans first time talked about manmade contrail-cirruscloud formation in the year 2017! The americans many many years earlier. And they hide these special cloudformations behind codes and phantastic storys about their formation. 20 Years of lies/secrets. For what and why? Germany kicked himself back about 20 years of existing knowledge. They kicked the knowledge americans had earlier, behind a code in their german cloudatlas. WHY? Cirrus-clouds formed from contrails. That was nearly the time, where these conspiracy and misinformation-campaign abaut chemtrails started. Since then, all people who realized anomalies like unusual trails in the sky, were called conspiracy-guys. Some years later they told us that these trails are a normal reactions from condensationtrails/watervapour from exhaust. No word about Fuels,or weatherexperiments. WHY? They had some Differnt Experimentalfuels wich were made by different companys at the same time and tested over decades. No wonder our today weather data is coruppted. Last week on one day nearly +40 Celsius. 2 days later -2 Celsius, only partly in some regions in germany. They, our industry and our governances dont act as they should and have to, NOW! Unableto to get it in their mind, that its no more time left for hiding things the have already botched years before. That their fuels and their decades long experiments changed the watervapour-circle in our atmosphere. Mostly they ignored it for years, to keep the oil, car and flight industrys growing, and cashflow alive. Make more money for the rich... Maybe they did not looked for this, maybe the electronic devices are getting better over time. BUT.I am a only a hobbyscientist who loved it to discuss themes with real climatescientists. Other people would call me a pothead, but not these people. Who else can give me a better answear? I had rly some nice expiriences, cause no one laught at me or called my theory a conspiracy. Sure there was some hard way to find the right communication. But they could understand what i have meant, and how it works in my head. No one with a brain, directly said i am wrong. No, they thought about it and brought it into calculations, only a scientist can make. Was fun to see my thought as a mathematical rule in a calculation for climate ractions. Also how watervapour reacts under several conditions. Will it get to drops formation and rain or not! This has changed and caused more UV-radiation, drought while the ocean is getting higher. So, we have more water everywhere but not where it should be! And there is another thing that makes it much more worse. Till american military sees climatechange as a force and threat-multiplier, they will do nothing to reduce carbon-outblast. Specially not in americas flying units, which cause a pollution of nearly 140 little countrys. And i tell you something, new fuels wont make anything better. Problem will be the same. Wartactics and strategys from the airuniversity show exactly how they acted over the years to force carbon output and expand production of nano particles, for different uses. Also the...

Why was this post flagged?

If we "fight the existential risk of climate change" are we seeking ways to eliminate weather and render all climate constant?

This is not a troll or snark.

This is a sincere query to understand the requirement ahead of supporting the effort.

Doing little things as an individual is not impactful enough, maybe except eating less to no more meat ( in all its forms )

The only thing for this kind of issue that has proved efficient historically is massive non violent protesting ( that is what Extinction Rebellion, aka XR, does ), with people landing in prison...

As for trying to provide policies, we should, like any problem, have a look at the stats to prioritize, and aim at better rather than worse, we're already at risk of hitting up to +26°C in 2026 if unlucky and not doing something, hard.

Fossil fuel out phasing is not simple to address, so we should limit it as much as possible while scaling alternatives. It also means that anything producing fossil fuels or ( CO2 ) should not be able to give any kind of money or service to any kind of politicians, to avoid conflicts of interests. Scaling alternatives (e.g. solar, wind, energy storage) means a lot of new buildings, and building something using portland concrete does create a lot of CO2.

Portland concrete is already the second more polluting stuff yearly on the planet after fossil fuels. Scalable and carbon negative ( actuaally removing CO2 from air) alternatives do exist to Portland concrete:

- MgO based concrete is carbon dioxide producing at first, but even more carbon dioxide absorbing during the 6 first months. It can be even be made from sea water, and was used by Romans and Egyptians in stuff still standing today. It can be 700 times stronger than usual concrete, dry even in wet climate, and doesn't need metal structure to be mechanically good, you can just use wood or plant fibers instead.

- wood is of course one of the best alternative should it come from actually sustainable and renewable source, and if well integrated with nature, which is a challenge and where there is already a ton of abuse.

So as a politician, the first and best measure that is needed is to phase out Portland concrete as quick as possible ( e.g. in about 2 years ). Carbon Tax ( with NO exception to it) and subvention should help, probably a lot of control is also needed to avoid harming ( too much? ) nature because every massive and quick change we do is likely to harm and destroy nature.

Regarding energy, nothing is simple, yet we have to find solutions to phase out oil/ gas/coal based as quickly as possible

- oil/gas/coal should be forbidden to search for more, as using already what we have access to is more than enough to kill us all.

- ( small ? ) nuclear is one of the best short term option despite all the cons everyone knows about it ( including needing a lot of water to cool down, which is unlikely sustainable. But we need to build a bunch of them, and it is dangerous.

- solar means a lot of concrete, land use and planet albedo change ( except offshore ), plus the solar panels themselves are essentially China based, and using rare earth elements, which is not good for scaling. It also needs to deploy very fast, we should probably deploy 1 every day for dozen of years, or maybe more to be faster and avoid risks. It also means we have to efficiently store the energy to be able to use it during the night.

- offshore wind is not bad, though like solar, it means energy storage. Onshore actually kills birds, which is not good ( plus it uses quite some land )

- Energy storage is also quite a problem:

* Li-ion batteries are not really sustainable, are not really recycled yet, and rely on rare earth element, plus they aren't really safe either.

* Blue solution's (aka Bollore) ones are a lot better, as they provide more cycles and don't use ( much?) rare earth elements, though they are only good to store energy for at most a day

* Nawa ones would also be quite good, as they can be charged and discharged a lot faster than li-ion or BS ones, plus have a lifetime of millions of cycles, plus they are carbon based, which is really great (and they designed that to be great regarding CO2), though can hardly store energy for more than a day. As cells, they sh...