Ways the world improved in 2018 | Hacker News Reader

Ways the world improved in 2018

qz.com

111 pointsbushido27 comments

So renwable Energy increased from 7 percent to 10 percent in 12 years with a perfect linear slope. So we just need only about 300 years till 100%. Good luck with that.

Is anybody reading these plots? This is really the worst news I read this year.

Don't know why I'm down voted. Did I miss anything? I thought I'd read about some good news but then it just showed how bad it really is... Let's hope we can speed up considerably.

> anybody reading these plots? This is really the worst news

A significant amount of work and investment goes into making some of these plots trend that way:

https://datareport.goalkeepers.org/

You might be down-voted because you take that improvement for granted.

You mistook a sigmoid curve for a linear one.

Not only, but apparently includes bio-fuels. Sorry, but agriculture is hugely environmentally impactful. We should not be growing fuel. I think a lot of it is subsidized by governments. Extracting petroleum from the ground is going to continue to be cheap for a very long time.

Aren't biofuels carbon neutral? You have to capture the carbon from the atmosphere to make the fuel.

Perhaps that is the argument, but corn or sugar cane or whatever don't magically become diesel. There's energy and other external costs put into the system, pollution by fertilizers, etc. Then again, growing trees on the same agricultural land would sequester how much carbon? And trees would be processed to building materials (among other uses) not released back into the atmosphere so quickly.

From what I have read, the experts agree the adoption rate is going to radically increase in the coming years and decades.

Or, look at it differently: we've increased our renewable energy capacity percentage by 42% over 12 years, even as world energy demand rose. (0.1/0.07 = 1.42)

This is great news! In about 75 years, we'll use >90% renewable energy. (1.42^(x/12) = 0.9/0.1)

Which of these is the better model? I don't know, I can't eyeball statistical regression on this chart. But my gut says percentage of energy use growth isn't what we should pay attention to if we want to predict the long run future. When/if renewables become far cheaper than coal, that percentage is going to skyrocket fast.

Both wind and solar are cheaper as of 2018 than continuing to run existing coal plants.

Hopefully better and more nuclear in the future with a progress on fusion and storage . Or any other novel ways to produce energy.

You missed an important point, the 2017 increase. "According to the International Energy Agency, the world got nearly 25% of its electricity from renewables in 2017, and that number should jump to 30% within the next few years."

They should rename this improved in the last 20-30y, as shown by graphs with a y axis that starts and ends on the first and last datapoint.

It's a nice article but as so often, a misleading title and suggestive charting choices. Hopefully fixing that will be in the 2019 article.

Wow, I didn't know the gender gap in primary and secondary education had closed so much. That's incredible.

Why, in theory, isn't Congress made up of 50% women + 50% men?

historical inertia?

Part of the answer might lie in seeing statistics for what percentage of congressional candidates have been women, over time.

Among Democrats, women are now up to about 40% in Congress. I could easily imagine that passing 50% in another decade or two as older members retire.

But <10% on the GOP side.

The short answer is: there is still a significant part of the electorate which prefers to have male representatives, and various networks and institutional structures in some parties which give men an advantage.

> isn't Congress made up of 50% women + 50% men?

it is true if Congress would be engaged in sex related questions only

I don't see why that follows.

But if it were true it would suggest that there are some important questions going unaddressed the way things are right now.

It was kind of joke, but why would congressman’s sex affect his decisions if he is professional? What are these important questions which are so affected by Y-chromosome?

I don't know why you're being voted down -- perhaps people think you're trolling.

Assuming you're naive, here's an example from today's paper: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/opinion/childbirth-injury...

More generally: why have more than one representative at all? Because every person has a slightly different perspective based on where they're from. The wider the variety of opinions (at least to the degree they reflect the diversity of opinions -- urban/agricultural/wilderness; male, female; different levels of education and background; etc) -- the more useful the result.

This would be more compelling if all the y axes started at zero.

Confirming the formula: "Contrary to popular belief the world constantly gets better in almost every metric, with one big exception: Nature"

> Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces.

-- Jean-Paul Marat, 1743-1793

The biggest issue is income inequality. So long as ultra-rich people exist none of these improvements really matter.

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