
Ask HN: Why don't geeks care about climate change? - mijustin
Maybe it&#x27;s just me, but I&#x27;m surprised by how little the tech community talks about climate change.<p>Searching HN, the top climate change story has about 100 points. Anecdotally, I don&#x27;t see geeks discussing it elsewhere either (Twitter, blog posts). In terms of leaders and startups tackling the problem, I can only think of Elon and Tim Cook.<p>Air travel, electricity consumption (think server farms), manufacturing, and shipping are big pieces of the startup culture and rarely seem challenged.<p>This surprises me. We geeks have rational, logical minds. Is it just me, or do geeks not care about the issue?
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yongjik
> We geeks have rational, logical minds.

No. Geeks just like tinkering with computers and/or electronics, and are
better at that than others.

 _Some_ geeks think that because they're good at computers they must be
equally good at everything else. (To be fair, I guess that also happens to
other hobbies/professions.) That might explain why some geeks have so little
respect for the opinion of actual experts.

------
sarahj
One of the (many) reasons I went vegan was to cut my impact on the
environment. I don't own or use cars. Where I can I walk, where I can't I take
public transit. I've made considerable changes to what and how I buy, to
source food with less of a total impact. I've started to look at alternative
clothing and technology strategies to reduce my environmental impact there
too.

I know there are plenty of geeks who have done similar things. The truth is
that a new tech or more companies aren't going to solve this problem - the
problem is we (who live in large economies) now live in a world which is
completely separated from the daily realities of where our stuff comes from.
We have spent the last 50 years enabling large mono-cultures and promoting
specialization - which has done amazing things for food availability - at the
expense that now a single plate of food easily contains ingredients from every
continent - at a huge environmental impact. Similar trends have happened in
manufacturing, textiles and practically every other industry.

Trends in tech that might help us:

* Hyper-local agriculture

* Locally-efficient down-cycling / recycling programs - for clothes, tech...pretty much everything.

* Teaching people how to buy and cook produce.

But the truth is that every individual needs to make a transition in how they
live - that means eating less (hopefully no) meat and animal products,
repairing instead of buying new, developing ethical supply chains (starting by
knowing the supply chain is a good start!)

And yes, companies need to change and adapt too...that means more
environmental regulation, more incentives to develop and adopt renewable
sources of energy - how we structure those is completely beyond my expertise
though...and I don't have much hope there.

~~~
insoluble
> I went vegan was to cut my impact on the environment

Maybe you can explain to me then how it is that this makes a significant
difference in global warming. The carbon that is released by cows and humans
after consumption of plant matter was derived from said plant matter. The
carbon in those plants came from the air. Hence, this is a closed system where
carbon is taken from the air by the plants, consumed by the animals, and then
put back into the air by the animals. There cannot be a net gain of carbon
from this. The only reasonable argument I have thought of so far is that of
methane, although in theory that can be pulled from the air and used as fuel
(whereafter it becomes available to plants again).

The burning of fossil fuels, on the other hand, puts more net carbon into the
air since those fossil fuels are being pulled from deep reservoirs that
otherwise would be keeping their carbon to themselves. The fossil fuels are
being burned far faster than they are being deposited back into the earth,
which lacks the balance that the grass-cow-human-air-grass loop has.

I completely agree that transportation should use electricity and related
energy sources wherever possible. However, I don't believe this will come any
sooner than economics demands it. All the countries in the world cannot be
controlled. Just look at all the unsuccessful wars where one country tries to
control another's internal affairs. Without the majority agreeing to bite the
bullet and use green energy, the first-world nations would become even less
competitive than they currently are, making first-world jobs harder to find.
Even many of the jobs related to building green technologies would most
definitely be outsourced to lower-cost nations who don't follow the
guidelines. Outside of fully socialised (zero-profit, public-benefit)
production of green technologies, the cost is too prohibitive.

One of the reasons why this topic is rarely discussed here is because people
often get very emotional. I hope people can understand that I'm simply trying
to point out the problems with non-socialised green. Please don't shoot the
messenger, as I care about the environment more than the average person; but
that doesn't give me or you magical powers to make people stop using fossil
fuel.

~~~
sarahj
> Maybe you can explain to me then how it is that this makes a significant
> difference in global warming. The carbon that is released by cows and humans
> after consumption of plant matter was derived from said plant matter. The
> carbon in those plants came from the air. Hence, this is a closed system
> where carbon is taken from the air by the plants, consumed by the animals,
> and then put back into the air by the animals. There cannot be a net gain of
> carbon from this.

Instead of the energy taken to grow those plants going to feed people - they
are used to grow animals. This takes an enormous amount of input energy from
farming the plants, to transporting them to the animals. Not forgetting water
transport also. Then there is the energy that is taken to manage the huge sums
of waste that these animals produce (most of which is stored in huge silos or
pits, which ends up leaching into ground water - but that's another thing).
Then there is the energy to transport, kill, transport, package, transport and
eventually sell - so the energy / calorie of animal food is no where near
efficient as it is for plants and beans. Basically, it is not a closed system
- we input so much energy into sustaining our meat habit (as well as the
ethical implications of killing 100,000,000-500,000,000 sentient animals a day
- including fish and the resulting bycatch)

I think we agree when it comes to the impact of a solution - there needs to be
a HUGE concerted effort to even make a dent - people can't immediately change
the nature of the worlds largest companies - but I believe that our only hope
is to promote local change (to get people to commit to a lifestyle change that
has to happen one way or another) - and push for governmental reform - will it
be perfect? no. Will it be easy? nope. But we have to start somewhere - and I
think diet and local economies might be a good first step.

~~~
insoluble
> we input so much energy into sustaining our meat habit

Well, the energy alone wouldn't really be a problem if we were using green
energy. The Sun provides more than enough energy for all sorts of human
endeavours. At the same time, I absolutely agree that much of the current
production and delivery system, food and otherwise, is inefficient. Efficiency
is an important matter, but alone it's probably not enough to curb global
warming in the _long run_ , especially not if the population keeps growing.

As you might have guessed, I eat meat. The funny thing is, I don't do it for
taste reasons. I do it because it's cheap protein that works well with my
digestive system. For some reason, I can't consume more than 15g fibre per day
without problems, and I've tried for months at a time before to see if I would
simply adjust, but that didn't happen. If there were _affordable_ , _safe_ (no
mercury or other contaminants), and _quick-to-prepare_ plant-based food that
went well with my body, I would certainly be on it. So far I haven't found
such a thing. One of the most peculiar aspects of all this is that I
constantly hear about how efficient plant-based foods are supposed to be in
terms of production, yet plant based protein (without high fibre) is never
cheap. It's always more expensive than meat/egg/milk based protein. How is it
that plants are so expensive when they're supposed to be so efficient? Without
that efficiency being seen by the consumer, it's unreasonable to expect
everyone to switch.

On the topic of changes in the system, I personally would prefer the
government-based approach where essential technologies for green energy were
at least subsidised enough that they were on-par with fossil fuels. The
problem is that companies might take advantage of the subsidies to increase
their own profit margin, which is why I suggested that the production be
_fully socialised_ , so that profit doesn't get placed at higher priority than
the environment. Moreover, there would be no unreasonable burden on
individuals, as would be the case to expect everyone to simply buy a Tesla.

~~~
sarahj
One of the reasons for the relative expense is the heavily-subsidised corn
(and a few other) industries which pretty much all goes to animal feed.

That being said, my food costs were easily cut in half when I went vegan (and
now, they are about 1/4 after some fine tuning of some other recipes) - I
mostly get protein from chickpeas, kidney beans and lentils - which are all
super-cheap compared to meat. I also eat a fair bit of tofu (which is very low
in fibre and which is also very cheap compared to meat). Tempeh is another
option, but I don't tend to make it often. We generally cook a big batch of
food at the beginning of the week - which means time to prepare is amortized
nicely (and frying tofu is very quick also)

I will admit that processed vegan meat-alternatives do tend to be more
expensive than their animal derived counterparts, and not the healthiest - so
I tend to avoid them - most of the expense is due to small production runs and
limited quantity - and the extra processing.

~~~
insoluble
I just looked up the price of bulk tofu, and it looks like the protein/price
ratio is less than that of ground beef but ~2x that of milk or eggs. I can't
say I've actually tried tofu. Maybe some day I'll give it a whirl.

For years now, I've wanted to see a wider availability of affordable plant-
based proteins, particularly at normal grocery outlets. At the same time I
understand that for many folks, beans are ideal since they're quite
affordable. Soy milk is a prime example of the difference in cost between
plant and animal protein. Not only does soy milk cost about 2x what cow milk
costs, but it has only about 65% the protein per serving, making it more like
3x the price. Perhaps there will come a day when these things are more
affordable, but I fear it may never happen since food seems only to get more
expensive with time.

The main thread was talking about technology, so maybe someone can come up
with a way to process and distribute plant products more efficiently. There is
a certain dilemma here in that many plant-goers like small-scale operations,
when large-scale operations and bulk processing are necessary for the lowest
prices. In this sense, there seem to be two separate goals being combined
together -- the desire to return to the olden days of family farming, and the
desire not to eat meat. I have also felt that there is something of an elitist
culture surrounding some of the vegan circles, where much of the food is very
high quality yet rather pricey. Perhaps it dates back to Hitler's plant-based
diet, which was also seen as high-class and elite. I can't help but wonder if
the prices are kept where they are as a result of this elitist culture.

------
sharp11
There are plenty of geeks who care deeply about the planet. No offense, but it
doesn't sound like you're looking very hard. In terms of superstar techies,
how about adding Bill Gates to your list? How about Google's investments in
solar? We're in the midst of a vast societal transformation to sustainability
-- certainly all the sectors you mention -- and it's being invented by
techies.

~~~
mijustin
I agree: I see movement at the top (Gates, Elon, Google, Cook). But it doesn't
feel like there's much of a grassroots movement.

Maybe I'm just missing them, but are there examples of this? I've been looking
for prominent new startups attacking this problem, and haven't come up with
much.

(For example, search Product Hunt for: climate change, sustainable, ecology,
solar... It doesn't feel like there's much there)

~~~
rnovak
I don't think that the lack of a "grass roots movement" implies a lack of
caring (on any groups part, but specifically "geeks").

Also, I don't think the lack of startups in the (pardon the buzzwords)
"sustainability space" implies that tech people don't care.

Maybe the tech people that _do_ care work for established companies in that
industry?

Maybe there are constraints that make it _extremely_ hard for a startup to
(again, pardon the buzzwords) "gain traction" in the industry, i.e. companies
that already have huge market share, overbearing regulations, etc.

idk, I just think it's a little premature to think that "geeks" don't care
about renewability/climate change _just because_ there aren't a ton of _tech
specific_ startups trying to solve it.

There are _tons_ of companies that don't list themselves on Product Hunt, etc.

There are _tons_ of engineers that don't use twitter (and that's not specific
to engineers).

------
yetanotheracc
There is a comment in this thread that discusses slaughtering people in order
to reduce their carbon footprint.

Also see this ad:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDXQsnkuBCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDXQsnkuBCM)

This kind of attitude is one of the reason why I do not want anything to do
with the climate alarmists. Quite possibly the cure is worse than the disease.

As regards the climate change itself, even the pessimistic projections of its
effects are not too bad as I see it.

------
burger_moon
I am skeptical of many absolutes. Specifically when they become politically
charged. I used to stand behind climate change much more before it became such
a hot political topic.

My trust in scientific findings and reports is not blind trust. Studies are
often funded by people or governments with special interests. The ethics of
university researchers is not as great as I would hope. The first time I can
remember a big scandal such as that is the aftermath of the financial crisis
in the US back in 09. I've worked under professors in academia and experienced
first hand how data is presented and funding is acquired, and it was not
always done with absolute truth and honesty.

Take a look at the front page here. It's a story about CMU academics taking
funding to do something very unethical.

I'm not denying that we are the direct cause of Earth warming up or anything,
but I am willing to listen to both sides make their case, and I will remain
silent while I listen and develop my own opinion.

Also,

>We geeks have rational, logical minds.

I see lots of irrational, illogical comments and threads on here and other
places. It's interesting to bunch everyone together and say we're perfect.

~~~
burger_moon
Well seeing as how this comment got down voted for simply explaining my
opinion, I guess that's another reason why you don't see climate change being
discussed on here.

People can't even stand the fact that I don't Share the same opinions and want
my opinion silenced by down voting it. So I guess see the last sentence of my
previous post.

------
saluki
I care about the Earth and climate change.

However I think those of us with rational, logical minds might have
reservations about a group of scientists who can be so sure that the earth is
warming and that human activities are the definite cause of it.

So most of us might be a little quiet on the issue of climate change since
we're not positive that human activity is definitely the cause of it and
temperatures are definitely going to rise 2 degrees (C) causing all kinds of
calamaties.

I think this explains why you don't wee more votes, comments and tweets about
it from engineers/developers.

I think we should definitely reduce emissions, I think the policies being
pursued are justified and smart to do just in case this theory is accurate.

My problem is scientists saying that without doubt human activities are
definitely causing the global temperatures to rise. At this point in time with
the data we have how can we be sure. It needs more study/data.

I'm definitely not saying that's an excuse for inaction. Reduce emissions now
just be careful about over stating what we really know for sure.

I think a more scientific approach would be to say that our data is pointing
in that direction we need to reduce emissions now just in case, here are our
finding and our data. We welcome other theories and review of our data and we
are going to collect more and more data to track this trend and determine if
our theory is accurate.

The Earth goes through climate cycles/changes over time. Ice Ages, warm
periods, little ice age, etc. And all of these changes/cycles previously were
independent of humans or human activity.

I'm not saying humans are not the cause of it, I'm just saying lets hold off
on saying they definitely are, collect more data/and more accurate data, be
open with the data and work together, be open to new theories, then determine
what is really happening while reducing emissions at the same time.

Also there is a possible solar minimum coming that might cause a 30 to 40 year
little ice age. Maybe that will give us some time to develop some break
through technologies that nearly eliminates the need for using fossil fuels
while avoiding the predictions of increased hurricanes, sea levels rising, etc
if temperatures would rise.

Most of all improve, perfect and invent green energy sources so we can
eliminate most emissions.

The Earth is amazing, lets take care of it.

~~~
mijustin
Really appreciate this thoughtful response (and the respectful tone). Thank
you!

~~~
tdb7893
The tone is nice but I don't think he is right about the science of it. For
example he talks about how more data should be gathered about this but climate
change has been in the public eye for more than a decade now so there's tons
of data on it so this sort of hedging of the bets isn't necessary anymore.

This paragraph is a good example of the problem here: > However I think those
of us with rational, logical minds might have reservations about a group of
scientists who can be so sure that the earth is warming and that human
activities are the definite cause of it.

This person is probably a computer scientist and yet they don't trust a "group
of scientists" which I am assuming by context to be climate scientists, who
are literally the experts in the field he is talking about

------
J_Darnley
Unless you are a genius inventor that's going to reduce everyone's carbon
footprint the best thing you can do to help prevent global warming is to kill
yourself.

Also, what if I just don't care?

~~~
shoo
Well, you went there, regarding killing yourself, so let's think this through,
using your own assumptions.

Devil's advocate:

I think your suggestion of suicide is perhaps one of the best ones possible if
you want to prioritise reducing your personal carbon footprint over all other
concerns, and are unwilling to (coercively or non-coercively) influence the
behaviour of other people. There's not a lot of difference one of us can make,
in terms of individual lifestyle choices. There's billions of us (and some of
us, like myself, have carbon footprints of 10x or 40x those in other nations
with less affluent lifestyles).

If you are willing to non-coercively influence the behaviour of other people,
then if you can convince 200 people to each reduce their carbon footprint by
1%, and that wouldn't have happened otherwise, you've just paid for your own
carbon footprint twice over (assuming your footprints are all of the same
size, etc). Note that this doesn't need technological wizardry - one might be
able to do this merely by talking to people, or perhaps being involved in the
odd act of political resistance.

If you are willing to coercively influence the behaviour of other people,
well, then you could e.g. kill 200 people (ideally those with large carbon
footprints, who were not going to kill themselves or be killed otherwise) and
yourself, and by your own logic that would seem strictly better (we're
glossing over secondary consequences here, this might cause a huge backlash
and security crackdown on environmental groups, which might make the overall
situation worse, but you get the idea).

------
veddox
Hm, I think your data is rather skewed. Sure, most people on HN would probably
self-describe as geeks, but that doesn't mean that all geeks are here! As for
the Twitter and blog posts you mention, I'd put that down to a sampling bias.

I think the geeks who do care are elsewhere - the natural sciences, for
example. HN is a place mainly to talk about technology, and so obviously that
is what gets most attention. Go to science fora, and you might find more about
climate change.

------
NumberCruncher
Maybe they know sources like these:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg)

and are still trying to fit a regression line showing any kind of global
warming...

~~~
shoo
Sure, I guess it depends on your perspective. It's good to look at things over
a geological time scale, and to have a broader perspective than the human
species, or human civilisation.

Regarding very recent climate change, maybe it is easier to focus on the
subset of the timescale that has supported human civilisation -- say, the last
10 thousand years. You'll note the temperature was relatively stable during
most of this time. Interesting!

If you look really closely at the right side of the second graph you posted -
over the last hundred years or so - you'll notice the temperature is shooting
up. It's a bit hard to see on that graph as the change is happening so quickly
relative to geological time scales.

If you look at a graph that focuses on the last 100 years, a trend is easier
to spot:

[http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-
temperature/](http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/)

I've had a go at drawing a regression line by hand myself:

[http://imgur.com/ixnuDX4](http://imgur.com/ixnuDX4)

Hypothetically, supposing this strange recent warming trend were to continue,
it is plausible that by the end of the century our planet might be
experiencing environmental conditions never previously encountered by our
species, and indeed not experienced by the planet for the last 5 million years
or so.

Perhaps not much interest in a geological sense, nothing to see here, but
perhaps from a shamelessly anthropocentric perspective we might have some
cause for concern.

~~~
NumberCruncher
In time series analysis picking the right time scale is everything.

Let´s do a small experiment:

One hot summer day I measure the temperatures in my home town between 6:00 and
12:00 and I get some data like this:

6:00 - 10 C

...

12:00 - 32 C

Now I make a small regression analysis and say that at 24:00 we are going to
die a painfull death because the temperature will raise with a probability of
95% to 70-80 C.

In this case I obviously forgot about the periodicity of daily temperatures.

The global temperatures have a periodicity of ca. 400.000 years. Therefore any
analysis based on a time period shorten than 400k years has the same problems
as my summer experiment.

>> the end of the century our planet might be experiencing environmental
conditions never previously encountered by our species

\- 2*2 might be 5...

\- at the end of the century I will be dead and "our species" will be only one
of million other species. For example the dinosaurs loved the 12 C more and
had a happy life on the ice-free antarktis a couple of million years ago...

~~~
shoo
So what are you arguing? That it is not possible to come to any conclusion
regarding the earth climate without first waiting some multiple of 400k years?
That it's not possible to separate a long-term 400k-year temperature variation
trend from short term temperature variations due to unusual/novel forcing
conditions?

The thing your hot summer day analysis is missing is a clear physical
explanation that explains why the trend you are observing is occurring, and
why it is going to keep occurring until 24:00. We probably don't even need the
explanation to be 100% accurate for this to be useful, merely accurate to a
first or second order approximation.

I believe "we" [1] have got enough understanding of the earth system to make
some pretty reasonable inferences on limited data. Certainly not complete
understanding, but it's not like a bunch of people are merely using e.g. some
deep learning voodoo to perform regression on climate data and have literally
no idea what the underlying physical processes involved might be.

Here's an example of my own: consider the geoengineering "launch a bunch of
disk-shaped satellites to block x% of the sun's light from hitting the earth"
thing. Let's ignore the fact that this isn't necessarily a great idea, and
assume someone has gone ahead and done it. We can predict with reasonable
confidence what the primary consequences of this intervention will be: less
light from the sun hits the planet, planet's mean temperature lowers a bit.
This behaviour won't be at all explainable as part of a 400k year planetary
periodicity.

[1] not in the sense of you or i, necessarily, but the relevant scientists in
the field.

------
dreamdu5t
Most geeks care, but I think most geeks recognize that the currently proposed
solutions like carbon caps and rationing are regressive and insufficient
anyway.

We can:

1) Ration our current carbon-producing technology (carbon caps)

2) Figure out more efficient technology

1 sounds good in theory but doesn't seem practical in reality. I don't drive,
yet most of my friends who are ardent "greens" wouldn't dare contemplate
giving up their car and red meat.

------
chei0aiV
I guess we are too busy delivering the next billion dollars to the likes of
Steve Jobs to think about the future of the planet.

------
IpV8
Some of us work in the renewable sector by choice :-)

------
runawaybottle
What the hell is a geek?

------
davelnewton
I reject the premise.

~~~
mijustin
The premise of my question, or the premise of climate change?

~~~
davelnewton
Oh, sorry; I wasn't clear :( The question :)

Climate change (and that it's almost certainly human-induced) seems pretty
clear-cut. Like a forest.

------
alcima
Most of us went to college and saw that Climate courses were where athletes
were routed for an easy A.

