What can a technologist do about climate change?

I work on climate software at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory[1]. My team works with big data and visualization. We support ACME[2] (the Department of Energy's climate modeling program), PCMDI[3] (a team that's been evaluating climate models since 1989), and a number of other projects and groups. If you are interested in what you can do for the climate, we need all the help we can get. Our code may not be the epitome of hygiene (think decades-old python with docstrings…

Technology will play a role in affecting a perilous recovery, it won't in the way most technologists think. We don't have time to "invent a fix", we can't bank on having fusion power magically suck carbon from the oceans and skies at the last moment. Or a sunshade to prevent the tundra from erupting in methane. Technologists can help organize (via online tools), educate and show (via charts, graphs, simulations). This is ultimately a social and political problem that requires…

While I think there's a lot of interesting stuff in this essay, I can't help but notice everything in the article requires making new things. I often wonder how much of climate change is driven by our need for new things, to consume. I don't want to downplay the need for science in avoid climate disaster and I'm by no means a primitivist. but, and please inform me because I don't actually know: How much could we curb climate change…

Hey HN - if you have similar resources, please comment and share.