iMessage is a legitimate significant value add to my life. Such a high percentage of my associates have iPhones that having an android is a legitimate harm for interactions (makes you less likely to be added to group chats)

I’m speaking as someone who has used both full time as well

Sure, but that's a network cost, not a phone cost, same as maintaining a membership to a golf club.

For many people the cost of remaining in an iPhone-exclusive network may be worth the extra money, for others they don't have any opportunity cost to leaving the iPhone-exclusive network.

Anecdotally, I also thought that my iMessage contacts were worth the extra money, until I found out all the people in the network used whatsapp far more frequently.

Turned out, the important conversations weren't happening on iMessage anyway, which was a surprise to me at the time.

You can get an iMessage capable phone for $429 (the iPhone SE). And for much cheaper than that if you're willing to buy second hand (I'm currently using an iPhone 6S that cost me £100 a couple of years ago will still run the latest version of iOS until September when iOS 16 comes out)

have you ever used an induction stove? They are like an order of magnitude better. Easier to clean, much faster to heat stuff

That comes with an order of magnitude higher price to boot and whether these improvements are worth it is going to be subjective. For you, you must like your stove, but for me, the improvements are so slight. It takes me a few mins with a wet paper towel to wipe off grease from the stove after using it, I don't think induction would be that much faster since it would only mean I save the 5 seconds it takes to remove the grates over the burners presumably, since I still have to wipe up anyhow. I never felt like gas was too slow to heat either; the kitchen is full of opportunities for parallelizing tasks while one thing is heating anyway. To me these things just aren't worth the cost to buy a new stove and get rid of my old one that does the job today.

The UX of ours is mildly annoying - ON, minus to start at mid-temp, plus plus plus plus to get to 7, all with no feedback aside from the beep.

I imagine there are better ones around with knobs or similar.

Okay, wow -- I had no idea Shatner was 90. He looks fantastic for his age

It's insane! Add to that that his mind is still churning. How much work did he do or how lucky did he get to accomplish that amount of health...

I mean on some level i agree with you, but since skepticism about climate change is likely leading to a massive humanitarian crisis it’s pretty reasonable for people to be angry at those who say “well actually according to MY research…” when there is such an overwhelming body of evidence pointing to disastrous climate change consequences.

Okay, I will give you a genuine answer: it will have almost unequivocally negative effects.

First, I'll address your asymmetry comment, with a couple of example points.

> crops

This is a common misunderstanding I see. Crops aren't solely viable because of climate -- a large portion of crop-viability is due to soil quality, which is built up over many many years. As areas that have traditionally been extremely cold become potentially more viable, crops are much less effective because the soil has not historically had a lot of fertilizer-producing flora/fauna.

> decreasing the probability of disasters

As far as I understand climate change, this is not expected anywhere. A disaster can be considered an event that goes dramatically against the norm. For example, flooding [extreme rain], drought [extreme lack of rain], fires [extreme heat], crop freezes/cold snaps [extreme cold]. Climate change essentially results in increasingly extreme deviations from the norm, so "disasters" go up. There's nowhere in the world I'm aware of that is going to get more consistent from climate change.

> make people want to move in

Even if climate were a zero sum game, and some places got better while others got worse, forcing everyone to move would be pretty awful. Further -- it's not a zero sum game, as mentioned in my last point.

The final point I'll make around climate change is that it's very likely to lead to geopolitical instability. As some areas become unlivable, famines, wars and refugees become more and more frequent.

> Crops aren't solely viable because of climate -- a large portion of crop-viability is due to soil quality, which is built up over many many years.

I live in a rather less urban area than most HN readers, but I actually don't know all that much about farming.

I'm fascinated about some of the implications of your comments.

Having seen potting soil and fertilizer for sale in greenhouses and garden centers, I've always assumed soil fertility is a portable, manufacturable commodity. That is, if you want to start a farm in a place with the correct climate but unsuitable soil, you can simply buy healthy soil from somewhere else to get started, and then after a while your crops will establish themselves and create a somewhat self-sustaining ecosystem on your fields that only requires input of sunlight, water and nutrients that are commodity chemicals (nitrates and phosphates that can be mined or chemically manufactured).

Where does the bought soil come from? Established farms. Presumably crops have some capability to create soil from barren earth over time, so you can safely harvest and export 5% of your soil a year, or something. Or you can use dedicated compost piles which produce soil from crop / livestock waste. Perhaps occasionally importing rocky / sandy / clay soil to replenish the base mass.

You seem to disagree with this view; your comment instead implies that soil fertility is more fixed, not fungible. I find this interesting, and want to learn more.

source on this? The most important thing right now is definitely reducing emissions, but carbon capture certainly has a significant role to play

Btw, "carbon capture" seems to mostly mean capturing emissions at their source, which, although it's not a bad idea, is not actually removing carbon from the atmosphere. So when you see news articles fly by that say "progress in carbon capture", look closely to see if they are just talking about scrubbing smokestacks or literally pulling carbon out of the air. The former does not un-screw us.

high level there's a two pronged path:

* Clean electricity generation (solar, wind, hydro with some sort of grid storage/distribution mechanism to handle when sun isn't shining/wind isn't blowing) and

* Electrification (EVs, non-gas heating)

> Can we have planes

Yes, at some point. Electric planes are being explored but have difficulties with battery weight. Another possibility is green hydrogen or perhaps some other yet-undiscovered energy source. Planes account for a relatively low percentage of global emissions (maybe 2% right now?) so this is not a priority

> Boats?

Yes -- electric pleasure crafts exist already. For long haul/shipping I'm not totally sure what's being worked on, but it certainly will be possible

> Clothing

Another space I'm not super familiar with. Again, it's important to remember that we need to focus on the heavy hitters, which currently are dirty electricity production (ie coal plants) and transportation (gas-powered cars)

So basically you say, let's replace most of the energy sources by solar, wind and hydro. And use battery every time we need to get off the grid.

As for storage for the grid, are we actually confident that we can transfer that quantity of energy between countries ? Because if everything becomes electricity powered. That means a lot of power over long distance.

Do we know if there are enough natural resources to produce that amount of lithium batteries also ?

Grid-level batteries will likely be made of something else -- check out form energy who does iron-based batteries.

> Can we transfer power between countries

Certainly possible, but requires infrastructure build out. Most countires can also provide a lot of their own solar/wind

It's not either or, we need both. It will never be more efficient to pull CO2 from the atmosphere then it is to just prevent it from getting there in the first place, so cutting emissions is still the bottleneck

Might be more "politically efficient" to extract it though.

I think this is basically a play by big oil to try to keep their business alive. We actually are pretty much at the point where the only thing standing between us and MASSIVE emissions reductions are special interest groups. Solar/wind are now the cheapest energy in the US, and the move is starting already

I hope they invent time travel in the far future and travel back in time to abduct oil & gas executives to force them to pay penance for their role in ruining the planet. Because they've gotten off scott free for decades.