Given what I’ve actually seen of people’s psychology, if you want anything done about global warming (like building 1000 nuclear power plants and moving on to real problems), then, yes, you should urge people to sign up for Alcor.
I realise this is a 13 year old post, but please don’t dismiss global scale problems with the first idea that comes to mind and without doing serious research first, your opinion is (to say the least) really respected on this site and lots of people would assume you were right about it.
By IPCC datas from 2014, electricity and heat production is a mere 35% (total, considering all associated costs) of global emissions. Even if we convinced everyone to switch to electric cars and transportations AND to electric heating, which would not be trivial at all, we’d have curbed emissions by a total 55%.
Also by IPCC datas, nuclear phase out will add a 7% cost to what it would take to stop climate change, while each year wasted between 2014 and 2030 by delaying actions increments cost by more or less 3%. Of course, that is due to the low prevalence of nuclear power as an energy source, but it still goes to show that the issue of nuclear energy is far from being the vault key here. (same link as above, page 41)
If you could persuade everyone to build 1000 nuclear plants, switch to electric cars and to electric heating, then you’d also be able to solve the problem in a dozen more ways.
I agree with everything else on the post and that there are worse problems than climate change (though my guess is that it would still increase existential risk by at least 5% if botched, mostly because it would increase the likelihood of someone botching AGI).
I realise this is a 13 year old post, but please don’t dismiss global scale problems with the first idea that comes to mind and without doing serious research first, your opinion is (to say the least) really respected on this site and lots of people would assume you were right about it.
By IPCC datas from 2014, electricity and heat production is a mere 35% (total, considering all associated costs) of global emissions. Even if we convinced everyone to switch to electric cars and transportations AND to electric heating, which would not be trivial at all, we’d have curbed emissions by a total 55%.
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full.pdf (page 102)
Also by IPCC datas, nuclear phase out will add a 7% cost to what it would take to stop climate change, while each year wasted between 2014 and 2030 by delaying actions increments cost by more or less 3%. Of course, that is due to the low prevalence of nuclear power as an energy source, but it still goes to show that the issue of nuclear energy is far from being the vault key here. (same link as above, page 41)
If you could persuade everyone to build 1000 nuclear plants, switch to electric cars and to electric heating, then you’d also be able to solve the problem in a dozen more ways.
I agree with everything else on the post and that there are worse problems than climate change (though my guess is that it would still increase existential risk by at least 5% if botched, mostly because it would increase the likelihood of someone botching AGI).