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Comment by mempko | Hacker News Reader

Anyone working in the computer and software (or any high-tech) industry should be worried about global warming. Even if society collapses, you will have certain needs like food, clothing, etc. However, high technology requires a highly organized civilization to exist and develop.

Global warming is a risk to organized human life and it's possible we won't be doing anything related to computers in 20-30 years. It's not crazy to think people will collectively lose the ability to make microchips and computers. Progress and technological development cannot be taken for granted and requires the right conditions to function.

Global warming is an existential risk to our industry!

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If global warming reaches the point it threatens our industry, our whole civilization will be halfway through collapse, and it won't end with computers not being needed for three decades. It'll end with a good majority of the world's population starving to death (or dying in acts of violence surrounding the event) and no one doing anything with computers for the next thousand years or so.

If it gets that bad computers in a thousand years may be out of reach. We have consumed all of the easily accessible fossil fuels so it will be much harder or impossible to bootstrap a new civilisation. This is plausibly the last great civilisation.

Yes. Which is why I believe that keeping our civilization in the stable state should be the most important policy goal. A point explored here, earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20447671.

It also bears reminding that climate change is not a threat to the planet or to humans as a species. Both will be fine. But it's an existential threat to technological civilization.

Or, in other words: if you want your children and grandchildren to have even a semblance of quality of life an average person has today, climate change must be stopped now.

The planet will be fine if you consider events like the Permian mass extinction to be "fine." If you doubt we could push things that far, see this recent MIT study:

http://news.mit.edu/2019/carbon-threshold-mass-extinction-07...

Humans may well make it through that, but I don't think it'd be a sure thing, especially if we get secondary effects like pandemics or nuclear war.

I think some geographically isolated village may survive even a nuclear war, and as long as a village survives, humanity stands a chance.

I don't rule out the possibility of us making ourselves extinct, but I think it's a low-probability outcome. Also, if only few humans remained, I'd still call it game over.

WRT. the study, it's scary stuff. If that threshold truly exists, we can kiss humanity goodbye.

Where do you people get these ideas?

Take HN threads further into flamewar will get you banned. Please review the site guidelines and don't do this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Why is this even downvoted? One solar flare hit and the Internet takes a massive dive.

I can always work construction, electrical and plumbing lol

Because it's like saying that gunshot wounds are a problem because they can ruin your clothes.

I am a farmer, was a net admin earlier in life but from what I have seen and heard myself and talking to my tribe from up north climate change is a natural event and there is nothing we can do to stop things like Earth's axis slightly changing making the sun way hotter. People that want to fight climate change should start in the cites with smog it is man made, it changes the climate in a localized area, it kills, and you can do something about it. Yet I never see these Climate change fighters completely giving up smog making devices.

You do tell them the sun isn't getting hotter right? Have you seen this? https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wo...

I'm partial to this graphic... puts things in perspective and puts paid to the notion that what's happening now resembles natural climate fluctuations.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

> puts paid

I think you're being downvoted because of a typo.

I think people don't understand English.

The graphic makes it very clear that what is happening now is very different in velocity and scale from historic climate swings. In other words, the climate change we're currently observing is man-made.

It's not a typo, but a common English phrase.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/put-pai...

I don't think it's exactly common - at least not when compared to the usage of other idioms using Google search.

There's also not a single match for that phrase in my entire ebook library...

Idioms like "as it stands" and "at the best of times" see like 50 times more usage. Those are common.

You learn something new every day though! Now I can use it too and add to the pile of people googling for that phrase's meaning that show up on Google Trends.

> I am a farmer, was a net admin earlier in life but from what I have seen and heard myself and talking to my tribe from up north climate change is a natural event and there is nothing we can do to stop things like Earth's axis slightly changing making the sun way hotter.

Oh, well. That settles it! I guess the climate scientists who have been researching this for half a century should go find other jobs.

Electric cars have no direct smog production.

They do tend to emit disproportionally high smug levels though.

It's just passing the buck to the companies providing the electricity so the consumer can pat themselves on the back and order vanity plates that say "0 MPG" and "OIL HAHA".

This is not a good take, especially given the steady improvement in both cost-efficiency and the availability of renewable energy.

As an example: my girlfriend and I are putting enough solar on the roof to give us the headroom to charge an electric car, when it's time to switch.

and NOC024U https://www.flickr.com/photos/denisgobo/48075951728/in/photo...

They get 120 mpg equivalent, the battery metals are recyclable in a closed loop, and they can be powered by renewable energy.

It’s passing the buck to companies that do a pretty good job avoiding smog and produce a lot of electricity with no emissions at all.

Economies of scale exist; urban dwellers generally pollute less on a per-capita and on a consumptive basis. And your whataboutism is misplaced--air pollution in cities has been improving steadily since the 1970's. (The Trump Administration is rolling back regulations related to this, which is fun, but that has likely not had significant impact yet.)

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