SamPhillips

5 ms·

1.
by SamPhillips 9y ago
1. They don't talk about it because it is not the primary cause of the warming we see. [0] 2. China and India have agreed to reduce emissions, as part of the Paris agreement. 45% of all solar installed worldwide in 2016 was installed i
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by SamPhillips 9y ago
+1 to CCL, they are a well-respected organization. (disclosure, I work at Google, but not in any way related to this project)
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by SamPhillips 9y ago
1. 100% of the problem that climatologists discuss is heat from the sun, trapped, by greenhouse gasses that we release. As you rightly point out, we can't control the sun, so we must control how much insulating gas we put in the atmosp
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by SamPhillips 9y ago
If you're (rightly) concerned about climate change there is a lot you can do. Here are three good resources. Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change" is wonderful tech overview [0]. "Drawdown&
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by SamPhillips 9y ago
Another great resource: Bret Victor's "What Can A Technologist Do About Climate Change" http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/
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by SamPhillips 9y ago
Here's an attempt at those things: https://medium.com/@i2amsam/we-can-do-it-ourselves-part-1-48... I'd love feedback. (And if you are interested in climate and tech join us at ClimateAction.tech)
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Climateaction.tech(climateaction.tech)
3 points by SamPhillips 9y ago|0 comments
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by SamPhillips 9y ago
If you're concerned by this, a group of us tech folks will be marching with the Climate March on April 29th. Join us! https://techsector.peoplesclimate.org/
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by SamPhillips 9y ago
Elected officials follow public opinion, and large-scale protest is an effective way to demonstrate and shape opinion. Join other technologists at the Climate March in 2 weeks (April 29). https://techsector.peoplesclimate.org&#x2
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
It was alarming before when he said it, and then alarming then he followed up and did it, for exactly the same reasons. The scientific community is clear & unambiguous: this is a huge problem now with civilization-level consequences, an
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
You mean, other than the insane people at: Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Oracle, HP, Uber... Clearly some successful entrepreneurs find that the 13 cents to still be worth it to have access to the talent and ecosystem. Perhaps there is
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
I mean, you say they are not idiots, but also that they are knowingly destroying the ecosystem on which supports all life on their planet. Which is kinda like knowing the brakes on your car are not working but being smart enough to cheat an
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
The lack of medallion rent-seeking could be Uber's structural advantage against taxis. The framing I see sometimes of Big Mean Uber vs 'poor little guy cab driver' seems wholly out of touch with my experience. At least in Bos
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
Washington State rejected one, unfortunately, one significant downside of the state solution is that some demand can just easily shift to another location. I wonder if there's a scheme where on state will pass it but only have it come
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
Greenpeace has some basics but not that level of detail. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/click-clean/
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
I think Arcadia Power is available nationally, I believe it was 1.5c/kWhr very cheap. It's the same REC offsetting that Google is doing, just at a much smaller scale. http://www.arcadiapower.com/
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
You shouldn't sometimes question it, you should persistently question and change it. It isn't just possible that we destroy civilization, it's actually quite likely. We know that dominate life forms have exhausted the resourc
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
I had the experience of working in healthcare doing data visualization for doctors. The first version of my software I took a very "engineering" approach, a simple, no-frills just-the-facts visualization of the data, defaulting t
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
Here's a dry, boring presentation of the data[0] (with a 'world average' tab as well as Mauna.) My understanding is that CO2 is close enough to well-mixed that levels are consistent at most measuring sites but Mauna one of t
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
Some folks are certainly hinting at it. http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very...
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
Yes, but is the rate of growth of CO2 concentration sublinear, linear or superlinear?
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
Some ideas for positive action: "What can a technologist do about climate change?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622615 (Spoiler: Be engaged, be influential, use your high-leverage superpowers)
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
This reminds me of the DeepMind bit where the AI beat human players despite not knowing about the edifice of built up knowledge in that domain. I'd expect that an AI could be a great chess player with enough gameplay info and not knowi
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
and to add more context, the bid in this article is $24/MWh, which would imply a $100/MWh Solar + Storage cost given the numbers above from Lazard. For comparison, the new Hinkley nuclear plant in England has a PPA guarantee at ~
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
They actually already do it, we enrolled in Boston this summer in "RushHour". They pre-cooled our house 6 times over the summer before a expected peak demand and gave us a $40 or $50 credit. It was great, we were not home 3 of th
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
Some ideas for positive action: "What can a technologist do about climate change?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622615
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
Sure, but there are those 30,000-50,000[0] times a year that humans get it wrong too. Would you rather have surgery from a human with a 90% success rate but a 0.0001% of a heroic save, or a robot with a 98% success rate, with the bonus that
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
Awesome! Go raise your army!
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
One interesting development is that I see the small "Nissan Leaf" style electrics competing against electric bikes now for the "second car / commuter car" role. For 1/10th the price ($4000) you can get a very
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by SamPhillips 10y ago
Why is it then, that there are now cruise ships going through the Northwest passage, roadways built on permafrost melting in Alaska, coral reefs dying worldwide? NASA invented the concept of global warming 40 years ago for political purpos

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