If we ever manage to halt this accelerating crisis we should seriously consider a modern-day equivalent of the Nuremberg trials. Thousands upon thousands needlessly dead, https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766 (from 2024)
> But while in West Germany and united Germany between 1946 and 2005, cases were brought against 140,000 individuals
https://www.timesofisrael.com/historian-examines-germanys-mi...
> British military courts carried out proceedings against 1,085 persons
> About forty-five additional trials were held against an unknown number of accused. [...] In all, French occupation courts passed 2,107 sentences [...]
> [I]n Poland alone 16,819 Germans were sentenced [...]
> In Czechoslovakia, about 16,000 German nationals received sentences. Exact figures are not available.
https://digitallibrary.un.org/nanna/record/627806/files/A_80...
And at any rate, why not both?
Each wind farm, each set of solar panels, each battery storage will begin to pay dividends immediately as each one is finished. While the huge plant will be nothing-nothing-nothing-... for years upon years.
Builders, engineers, capital, and such is better suited to be investing in other sources of energy.
Listen to Ken Griffin explain why we need nuclear.
/s
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nuclear+climate+change
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Start 11 years ago and go backwards
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1439337600&dateRange=custom&...
Lots of manufacturing projects, lots of related industries boosted, a renewed investment in nuclear engineering bringing a lot of nuclear job experience, and a way to potentially dig deeper into the backbone of global trade again.
Imagine if even one of the tankers hit in the strait of Hormuz was nuclear.
Either way, "loss of nuclear material" is the real concern isn't it, instead of just the nature of how that loss happened?
The question still stands. If a country knows they're potentially going to cause a nuclear disaster by hitting one of these ships on their shoreline, are they as likely to shoot at them?
And even among the non-hardliners mistakes are rampant in war. It's not about what they're likely to rationally do, it's about what some local, demoralized missile officer who graduated in the bottom 20% of his class does when he's cut off from command and drinking too much.
If Iran wants to make their country a nuclear wasteland, they don't need to blow up ships to do it. I'd imagine they probably don't want that outcome, but hey I'm not an Iranian so I can't speak for them.
I kind of figured that'd just be a "logical" thing and not necessarily a "cultural" thing, but I agree I don't know all cultures.
Plus there are the security concerns. Every civilian nuclear power plant has armed guards on duty around the clock. Those guards have to also be trained and paid. Many foreign countries have laws against bringing weapons into their ports.
If we want to reduce CO2 emissions from merchant ships then use nuclear or renewable power on shore to manufacture carbon neutral synthetic liquid fuel. Use that to run the ship engines.
In transport emissions, passenger vehicles dominate by far (with around 12% of global GHG emissions), even more so in developed countries. Then freight by road with 7.5% of total emissions.
Maritime shipping is actually the least carbon intensive way to transport goods over long distances by at least two orders of magnitude [2].
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport
[2] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/transport/06_figure_8-6/
Followed by agriculture & manufacturing.
Virtually all of the current conditions were in motion before bitcoin and AI were even a thing.
Not exactly background noise but totally incomparable to the normal CO2 outputs of major nations like the US or China. I.e. ~20 Million Tons CO2 vs 4 Trillion and 13 Trillion Tons respectively.
And I would argue the usefulness of bitcoin is negative from the viewpoint of a free society.
AI is to a certain degree a different story, but also there it depends what you're doing.
We live in a thin atmospheric skin around the planet, and that skin has a finite volume. If earth was the size of an apple, the atmosphere is thinner than the Apple's skin in proportion.
Pretending we can do whatever we like for infinitly long inside an finite volume is completely unhinged. The financial and political elites, who some frame as the true geniuses point to technological solutions that are always "just around the corner" for the past decades with some of them even eying to leave the planet behind entirely.
All of that while we know how to address the issue.
if you mean PoW mining instead of crypto in general then maybe. ethereum uses about as much power as a small village in europe so it should never be a target for climate action.
the public benefit of blockchains is real and it comes from the fact that no one controls them and they let users ignore the law. thats the part governments dont like. corporations also dont like it even if they work in the industry, coinbase and binance started their own chains so they would have full control over the way they evolve.
crypto is a cypherpunk/anarchist technology that got hijacked by investors to sell their scam coins and fake decentralized web services. without it your only option for buying things that are illegal in your country (weed, abortion pills, guns, hacking tools) is sending cash in paper mail or using some complicated scheme where you have to trust third parties. i think thats worth some tax evasion.
I know the original idea. In 2009 I bought coffee using Bitcoin. I had to wait 30 minutes till it went through despite using a fee that back then mirrored what PayPal would take. Then I knew: OK this is not going to be used as a cash replacement.
Then it became clear that it was used as a way to pay for illegal shit on the internet, be it drugs, botnets or services of questionable ethical value. Of course also to speculate, to launder money, to blackmail, to extract ransom, to run ponzi schemes or rug pulls, which became a big driver by people who wanted to get the wealth without having to put in the legwork.
And these are still the main drivers behind crypto currencies today by a wide margin. So yes: Net-negative. Prove me wrong.
Useless yapping about opening windows at night, protecting the vulnerable, limiting global warming to 1.5C, and not drinking caffeine.
Is any of this "Call to Action" actually actionable?
Obviously not; and it is pathetic.
What should be actioned:
- remove regulatory hurdles to AC installation
- mandate such installation in residences that otherwise reach unbearable temperatures
- make funds available to subsidize the installation or train more workers for AC installation
That would 'protect the vulnerable'.
Talking about opening windows at night or climate change does nothing, and is performative only.
You cannot talk about thousands dying today, neglect to mention the actionable solution, and talk only about climate action which will help on a time frame of decades to centuries.
If you live next to a road and every other month a car crashed through your living room wall you'd probably fix the root cause after the first time it happened. If you are clever you fixed it even before it occurs. What you would not do is only deal with the damage caused month for month and pretend there is no need to address the root cause.
The reason why many pretend our only option is handing out band aids while the blade keeps spinning, is because it is hard to imagine anything else, if your salary depends on you not addressing the problem.
It feels more and more like watching a bus driver playing chicken against a solid, immovable concrete wall. It is obvious who wins, the only question is into which directions the scrap explodes most, while the driver eyes for the ejector seat. And all the kids pretend driving into the wall is the only reasonable option.
It is possible for humanity to create unsurvivable conditions in our earths atmosphere. Should we do that if there is enough profit in it? If not, where would you draw the line and how would you set/enforce the limits?
And then what?
So what I propose is that we've already accepted it, and wringing our hands saying "if only you'd all repent your ways and admit you were wrong by ignoring Al Gore!" might feel cathartic, but ultimately wouldn't result in much change if people did, indeed, truly repent.
Which other things do you believe a society can't do at the same time? Taxes and waste managment? Breathing and thinking?
I'm saying we can easily do both.
The only obstacle is morons.
A: Let's keep handing out band aids
B: I think it would be far more important to remove the razor blades from the handrails which causes the bleeding
A: I simply want to stop the bleeding, why can't we keep handing out band aids? People should not suffer
B: I think we can do both as needed
A: You misunderstood me, that is what I said
After a record year of traffic casualties, I suggest to remove regulation that commonly prevents installing seat belts in your car, mandate the presence of seat belts, and subsidize retrofitting older cars.
Instead, politicians talk at length about better education in primary school promoting safe driving later in life. Additionally they recommend to pay attention while driving, and they call this an "Action plan" to make driving safe. No word about seat belts.
You respond to my proposal, saying that seat belts are merely a band aid, that I pretend they are our only option, and that we better fix the root cause before an accident occurs.
When then someone talks about the thousands upon thousands needlessly dead while ignoring the existence of seat belts we could install today, it just drives me furious.
So again:
It is possible for humanity to create unsurvivable conditions in our earths athmosphere.
1. Should we create it if there is enough profit in it? Y/N
2. If not, where would you draw the line and how would you set/enforce the limits?
If your answer is Yes to (1) you are in a suicidal, planet killing cult. If your answer is No, you realize the simple fact there are limits to what can be done in a limited space. But then you have to draw a line and find a mechanism even if you don't like it from an ideological standpoint. And that is what I would be really, honestly be interested in.
I do not think that you believe so.
How is it acceptable that the actionable solution is entirely ignored in favor of performative speech?
"Despite these drawbacks, AC remains crucial to protect populations at increased risk from high temperatures, as well as for refrigerating essential medicines and other health-protecting technologies. In the absence of other options, AC – or another equally effective active cooling technology – should be available to those who need it most as if it were a medical necessity."
[1] https://mb.cision.com/Public/15083/4360202/b9c9bce2cff90dee....
AC is in no way mentioned in the linked article or the Call to Action that identifies "4 critical areas of action on caring for the vulnerable".
You unearthed a PDF where air conditioning is mentioned in a QA side note, here's the part you omitted:
> Why doesn’t the WHO just recommend wider use of air conditioning? Air conditioning (AC) is not a sustainable (in time or environmentally) societal solution for reducing hazardous heat exposure. It is inequitable and unaffordable for those with low incomes; it increases energy demands and heightens the risk of blackouts; it may promote individual and societal dependency and overcooling, and may impair heat acclimatization; and it contributes to both the urban heat island effect and climate change, thus worsening heat exposures in the medium and long term.
So maybe, if you are lucky, they allow AC for the most vulnerable with a special exception.
Does this stance sound to you like the UN is making the necessary recommendations to roll out AC widely to protect people?
They are not nearly doing enough. It's like they are not even trying to do their job. I am honestly disgusted by how pathetically incompetent they are.
It was full of claims about air conditioning contributing to global warming or heating up cities, which I would consider in the territory of pseudoscientific idiocy.
So what have they done to address the problem? Put out recommendations to open windows at night?
Because that seems to be the extend of their work. I have not seen them mention any research about air conditioning or its feasibility, so it's unclear to me why you would just assume they did a great job and know what they are doing.
I do think that ICE car drivers who have ever, e.g. voted against public transit are guilty of _something_ but I don't think it's manslaughter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/opinion/utility-bills-cle...