Hope it was worth it.
Almost word for word.
1) that’s weird. 2) we make trade off choices all of the time, it’s what society does. However, when one side argues that the trade offs don’t exist, or lie about them, that’s deeply immoral, especially when it is such a pervasive, existential threat.
“If you work this job I have for you in my mine, I know for a fact you’ll get mesothelioma, I won’t tell you, and in fact fight tooth and nail to convince you and everyone else that it’s perfectly safe. But now that you have mesothelioma, why don’t you think about the salary we paid you? How it supported your whole life? Maybe have a bit of perspective, huh?”
It’s truly a liquid with magical properties that doesn’t have a green equivalent.
Now the ask is to make people’s lives uncomfortable? I doubt that’s going to fly.
My bet is whoever figures out a carbon capture -> green oil solution is in for big wins.
Energy makes our lives great.
Before airplanes, before tanks, the oil-fired battleship was a vast improvement over coal-fired battleships.
Also "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power" by Daniel Yergin is essential for understanding the history of oil.
Otherwise known as a tree
Electroil is an imaginary liquid that is as energy dense as oil but can be converted to electricity at almost a 100% efficiency
We know most of the oil is used to power engines. It’s not a very efficient chemical to kinetic energy conversion.
It doesn't have to be one or the other.
There's a big difference between refusing to burn massive amounts of oil and refusing to participate in any aspect of society. If burning oil like this is immoral for everyone, it is immoral for you; if it is not immoral for you, it is not immoral for anyone with your resources.
> Otherwise their arguments are invalid because of hypocrisy!
Yes, their arguments are silly because of hypocrisy; pricing the poor out of energy is a hypocritical way for the world's rich to purport to make change.
Unless you are living naked in a forest, foraging for food, and shivering for warmth, and have done so since birth, you’re as hypocritical as those you would accuse.
I'm not going around judging people for ordinary oil use, I fully accept the costs of my actions, and I know that convenience is more important to me than reducing my carbon footprint, at some threshold. The hypocrisy comes from putting on an air of caring without putting in the work, as though it is somehow a moral accomplishment to impose the costs of your own lifestyle on others.
I also think it's pretty rich that this thread is nothing but name-calling, antagonism, and flamebait, and dang is nowhere to be seen; but I avoid all of this behaviour and somehow still get reprimanded because HNers can't help but be nasty to eachother in my threads.
What could an activist possibly do to convince you?
Plenty of climate activists have obstructed pipelines with direct action, have blockaded roads and blocked oil derricks; they have sacrificed time, money and in some cases their freedom when arrested. Meanwhile, you and others of your ilk sniff about "antagonism" and go about your day feeling smug that you're not a hypocrite because you "fully accept the costs of [your] actions" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean).
You say you "accept" the cost of your actions, but you leave it up to the rest of us to make sure you pay those costs.
I'm sure that future generations (well, the fraction that don't die from climate-aggrivated famines, wars or diseases) will be pleased to know that wealthy software devs from the Era of 24/7 Electricity didn't ever have to feel uncomfortable about their choices.
Are you interested in the Science? Here's some test questions: how do you explain the lack of warming signal for the past 15 years in the gold standard temperature dataset from the USCRN? What percentage of change in global cloud cover would account for 2C of warming and how does it compare to the accuracy of the IPCC model ensemble in predicting changes in global cloud cover?
I'm not denying a warming climate, but I do think there are significant error bars surrounding calculations of Climate Sensitivity. Until someone can provide me with better answers than "what does it hurt to err on the side of caution" I'm going to be a skeptic of predictions of catastrophic warming.
Now are you going to ignore Science, or are you going to ask for hard evidence of extraordinary claims?
We need structural change mandating a low carbon economy, regulatory enforcement, and energy sources factored in throughout the supply chain to achieve this. This kind of effort is already working with RoHS and REACH - the technical infrastructure exists - but the political will isn’t quite there yet.
I fly, but I am working with the European Commission to make this kind of regulatory accountability a reality - similar to substance restrictions, it’ll start as an audibility measure, and will then grow to encompass enforcement and public transparency. Several of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers are on board. The automotive and aerospace sectors are trying to do their own things, as ever, but are making noises towards harmonisation.
So. Living in the forest isn’t the solution (although I do, and produce 100% of our energy and water, and 90% of our food, here), rather pushing for structural change through whatever means are available for you. I’m a techie. I’m helping define XML standards that might just save the world.
But I do fly.