
It's 2050 and This Is How We Stopped Climate Change - makerofspoons
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/11/688876374/its-2050-and-this-is-how-we-stopped-climate-change
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lm28469
> So Sila Kiliccote and I take that leap. Sitting in her kitchen, with solar
> panels overhead and an electric car parked outside, we pretend that it has
> happened. It's 2050 and we've stopped climate change.

Yeah right, what about the 3+ billion people living in asia/africa below
what's known as poverty in US/EU ? Do they also live in high tech houses on
top of hills, powered by solar panels and batteries, drinking latte macchiatos
from an $3k coffee machine and having an electric car / access to helicopters
? Or is this reserved to the elite and they're still manufacturing 90% of our
gadgets in heavily polluted and overcrowded cities ?

> Now, because the animals are growing so much faster

Oh but we already do that, it doesn't look good though:
[http://www.veterinaryworld.org/Vol.2/November/Sudden%20Death...](http://www.veterinaryworld.org/Vol.2/November/Sudden%20Death%20Syndrome%20–%20An%20Overview.pdf)

SV is so insanely disconnected from reality, it now sounds more like religious
prophecies than reasonable predictions; repeat after me "tech will solve all
our issues". The only reason we'd stop polluting is if it gets financially
more profitable not to pollute, nothing more than a beneficial side effect.

“Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each
floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good... so far so good...
so far so good. How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land!”

~~~
alexandercrohde
So what point are you ultimately spending your energy trying to convince us
of... that the human race will necessarily kill itself?

~~~
lm28469
Not really, but maybe instead of running blindly ahead and applying more of
the cause of our issues we should stop and make conscious decisions. Right now
it seems that we forgot technology should serve us, not the other way around.

Writing best case (science fiction) scenarios isn't going to do anything good,
it might even make people feel good about themselves and "wait" for the
problem to be fixed. Pollution is a social/economical/political issue, not a
technological one. Innovating in the later while stagnating in the former
won't do much.

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imtringued
It's more likely we take the lazy route and forcibly activate vulcanoes for
local cooling.

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DigiMortal
It's 2500 and everyone is laughing about the climate panic of the early 21st
century

~~~
ako
It’s 2100 and everyone is wondering how people could be so short sighted and
think it’s ok to polute and destroy...

~~~
mojomark
It's 2019 and as an engineer responsible for designing large power plants with
the potential to emit large amounts of Carbon over the next 50 years, I'm
doing everything in my f*cking power every day to eliminate harmful emissions
despite "leadership" (regulators & funders) pushing for higher poluting
alternatives that they erroneously believed to be lower cost. We simply can't
wait around for these lazy ding-dongs to take action.

~~~
unicornporn
It's not as simple as laziness.

Within our current economic system, any country that will try to _really_ do
something will face severe recession.

~~~
mojomark
...and regarding environmental controls instigating a recession, that is very
far from the truth (again, in my experience).

Extending the above 'ship design industry' example, when IMO imposed emission
caps on ships, did the shipping industry (and supporting industries) faulter
or thrive? They're thriving. Why? Because they need to build new things to
replace the old things.

-MAN B&W and Wartsilla (Engine Manufacturuers) are now building dual-fuel engines.

-These guys, and their affiliates are offering Exhaust Scrubbing systems (e.g., EGRs, SCRs, Scrubbers, etc.).

-Because of the increase in SCR's, there is now a new, large market for UREA (the active agent, basically Ammonia, in SCR's)

-Propeller manufacturers are offering more hydrodynamic designs, and tow-test tanks are employed to help design those propellers and hydro-improved hull forms.

-New companies have sprouted up (e.g. Energy Focus, etc) just to supply energy efficient LED lighting for ships.

-Contractors are being employed to design new LNG-fuel supply infrastructure to piers world-wide. New training facilities/programs are being built to teach sailors/shore crew how to safely handle LNG.

-Marine hardware suppliers now have a host of new products to sell to meet the demand for energy efficient plants (e.g., high accuracy fuel mass flow meters, shaft torque/thrust sensors, tank gauges, smart controls for HVAC plants, low-power water production units, etc.)

-Companies have sprouted up to supply newly conceived "energy dashboards" that use genetic and machine-learning algorithms to find optimized ship operating configuration (speed, equipment line-up, trim, etc) for a given set of environmental/mission inputs (e.g. weather, voyage plan, etc.).

-I could go on for a long-long time.

Does this sound like a recession to you???

The argument that increasing environmental regulation will stifle the economy
is just not true. From what I've seen, the opposite is true. Competition is
spurred and new markets emerge, putting more people to work in jobs that
actually matter.

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LinuxBender
It's 2500 and we finally stabilized earths orbit and removed the wobble, thus
stabilizing climate changes. Sorry about 2283, the year of the "oops, no
gravity" for a disturbing 14 seconds of everything floating.

