Comment by egeozcan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by egeozcan | Hacker News Reader

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TL;DR: I don't know what to do and think most people don't, too.

I mean, private emissions, I heard, are insignificant compared to industrial. But then, industry exists because, in the end, we consume stuff. Right?

I'm sincerely hoping for someone who I can trust to explain to me how I'm making the world a worse place by purchasing, let's say, a car, and that as if I'm a 5-year-old. Not because I'm easily bored, but because (I accept,) I'm still ignorant and I need to start from the beginning.

A meteorologist (I just googled "scientist who studies weather", not a native speaker here) telling me "hey, the temperatures will increase by X degrees and the sea level will increase by X meters so... we are doomed" makes me want to do something but I can't even begin to predict the effects.

Also there are these false data generated by (IMHO, crazy) deniers but while easy to catch on its own, they have this side effect of creating many false positives while trying to identify fake data in this ocean called the internet.

What can a technologist do about climate change? (2015)

http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

TL;DR: better energy production/transportation methods, data-driven tools for finding bottle necks in production systems, information distribution for infrastructure and coordination and energy demand, making better tools to collect, analyze, present, and change minds.

Basically the same talent and sweat we put into getting 1% more click through rate to put on the slide deck for the next VC funding pitch, except, you know, put towards not having our grandkids die. You know, that kind of stuff.

"If any 'founders' out there want to 'disrupt' our 401 ppm atmospheric CO2, or 'moonshot' ocean acidification, that would be cool"

"minimum viable planet"

OK, I started reading this and came back shortly to say it's amazing. I will probably read it more than once and keep it as a reference. OTOH, maybe it doesn't say too much about the impact of the mentioned actions, I'll just have to read, I guess.

That's fair.

One person on their own can only do so much, so on a personal level "buy as little as you can while staying happy" (or "save as much as you can and retire early") are good things. These are good for individuals even if we are wrong about climate change.

Cars, for example: When you buy a car, the car maker realises there is demand for cars and makes more cars. If you buy cars less often, they makes less of them, putting less CO2 into the air.

Your English is good, by the way. While "meteorologist" is a scientist who studies weather, and "climatologist" is a scientist who studies the climate, even many native speakers get "weather" and "climate" mixed up.

I'm sincerely hoping for someone who I can trust to explain to me how I'm making the world a worse place by purchasing, let's say, a car, and that as if I'm a 5-year-old.

I don't follow global warming goes, but I believe the argument goes: the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more people will die, and the more we consume, the more CO2 will be in the atmosphere...

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=global%20warming...

Numbers are a bit all over the place.

Private emissions are definitely significant, and it's important that people know this. Food, heating/cooling and transportation are the big household ones. And they're straightforward to make improvements in.

Let me be more clear: What would be the impact of 1 million people switching to using bikes from cars to go to work for a year, in terms of, hmm, well-being of polar bears (animals for which I care deeply, like other animals)?

Everyone is telling me to do this and that, and that it's important. No one seems to be talking about the impact.

Being a software-developer, I know there is a limit to how much you can dumb-down the things. I probably wouldn't be able to explain two's complement to a five-year-old. But, I see the importance of the issue and we need to begin somewhere.

Transportation is the big one, and the one most people are least willing to cut down on.

Unfortunately the biggest impacts you can have are to stop flying, and stop driving a car, the suggestion of which many people don't react well to.

> and the one most people are least willing to cut down on.

Getting people to eat less meat or meat from less worse emitters or upgrading existing buildings to low emissions for heating does not seem that much easier.

Anyway, you can't fix the problem with a single change.

People are set in their ways, but there's a continuous rollover of generations. Current young adults are much less into cars, air travel and meat. (Older people do make these changes too, but it's slower).

But how much? For example, what would be the impact of a 20% reduction in traffic congestion, made possible say by workplaces moving to a 20% remote workforce (or every employee works from home one day per week on average). What if we were to reduce our flights by 10% or 20%? These are things that people can actually envision doing. How much is needed in order to actually help? Maybe only a 5% reduction is needed (one day home in 20)?

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