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Comment by marc__1 | Hacker News Reader

"Most people underestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years". Over the past 20 years, we have the following mind-blowing breakthroughs, so there is a lot of reason for optimism:

- the FDA has approved about 190 new cancer treatments for adults, we have the Human Genome Program and CRISPR;

- graphene was isolated in lab and it is used in many applications (from solar cells to HIV diagnosis);

- bluetooth officially launched in 1999;

- we are on Mars with Curiosity and reusable rockets are a reality;

[1] https://www.fda.gov/media/122693/download

[2] https://www.drugs.com/newdrugs.html

[3]https://fee.org/articles/the-20-biggest-advances-in-tech-ove...

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What does this have to do with climate change, or the next 10 years, at all? Unrelated facts do not prove your argument. If anything, this shows we're using up a lot of our innovation capacity on things that aren't stopping something that's going to disrupt global society during the lifetime of many people currently living today.

Almost nobody cared about climate change for last 20 years or before that. We might care about in in the next 20 years.

Not bad. Only 50 years too late. I thought the so called "free market" was great for allocating resources, such as what would be needed to solve these problems, though? Any rational human should recognize that solving climate change on Earth is a better use of resources than shooting a car into space and literally adding to the problem, but, yet, here we are.

Fusion power is still decades away, we have no practical carbon capture technology better than planting big-ass trees, and one of the best ideas people have had is to spray sulfuric acid into the atmosphere to reflect the Sun's rays. Meanwhile, we can't even agree to phase out coal burning, and we've poisoned everything with chemicals and microplastics.

> we have no practical carbon capture technology better than planting big-ass trees

This is not true. There are many projects underway (example - [1]) utilizing various technologies, and while it's true none has yet to reach economy of scale there is still time to do so. We only need a few good and scaleable solutions.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57588248 "Climate change: Large-scale CO2 removal facility set for Scotland"

> This is not true.

You realize you're not making your point, when you literally follow "this is not true" with the reason it is true:

> There are many projects underway (example - [1]) utilizing various technologies, and while it's true none has yet to reach economy of scale there is still time to do so.

Doubtful.

> We only need a few good and scaleable solutions.

Well, where are they?

Almost. But those that did were not listened to as in this case where Carl Sagan clearly explains the situation before policy makers almost 40 yrs ago [1]

1: https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI

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