Tagged “environment”

solar-powered vertical farms are like very inefficient farms with extra steps

"regenerative", "nature-based", "climate-neutral", "efficient", "reduced emissions intensity" agriculture with "sustainable intensification", coming soon.

learned about this on a video of "depth of different bodies of water".

Inefficiencies of trying to scale carbon capture

many contain PFAS

very HN that first reply is "work on open-source software"

oh no

interesting to watch if we can finally make recycling financially viable

These are like something out of a game

equal parts fascinating and terrifying. Containing oil spills, recovering cargo, cutting the ship into pieces.

Lot of interesting stats throughout.

1. To add enough CO2 to Mars to make the atmosphere thicker (which reduces temp fluctations), would make the atmosphere unbreathable regardless of O2 content
2. Earth-like does not mean like current earth. For most of the planet's history the water and atmosphere were toxic to us
3. It would take 79,000 years at current rocket speeds to get to Alpha Centauri

Grim that the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 gets a section on this page..

Can we reduce resource use and emissions more rapidly than increases caused by growing affluence? History does not think so.

On mining and building

Still don't love the obsession with "tearing down the economic system that rejects it". Funny that something talking about maintenance doesn't think that existing systems could be improved..

So many smallish bits it seems hard to make a dent in this. Also troublesome is the difficuly of measuring.

Still curious of how to estimate or measure the impact of things like switching to EVs - what is increase on existing residential power use, determining emissions from that. There are other benefits of it, like improving neighbourhood air quality, but there isn't a zero-cost switch. Land use for different energy types is another one.
Also interested in some macro estimates of energy requirements per day (i.e. 9MJ of food, production and travel costs of that alone).

Excellent Ezra episode with Jesse Jenkins touched on a lot of the questions I had about this.

On effective environmentalism. I wonder if carbon is an oversimlified metric and we are ignoring too many other factors, like ground/water pollution, or animal welfare in farming operations optimizing for high-efficiency.

Treating high prices as reasons not to do a thing.. Though it wasn't the only reason; I have no idea of the impact of desal plants on marine life/ecosystem.

clean electricity vs animal welfare tradeoffs

report found that breaching lower Snake River dams is “essential” to helping protect and recover threatened_ salmon populations."

The windshield phenomenon (or windscreen phenomenon) is the observation that recently fewer dead insects accumulate on the windshields of people's cars. It has been attributed to a global decline in insect populations caused by human activity.

A history of plastic recycling, mostly on economics of it, and the symbol being put on plastics.

sidenote: the excerpt and title from Medium was better than for this link.

Hacking coral sex to accelerate reef regrowth

retrofitting buildings to improve energy and thermal efficancy faster

On resource extraction in Canada. Apparently 75 percent of the world’s mining companies are based in Canada!

Also fun hover effect on links

The hydrogen is currently being made with coal but Energy Minister @AngusTaylorMP says the trade will be crucial in bringing down global emissions.

I'm sure it will, Angus

Wrapping broccoli in a material that slows down its respiratory rate doubles it shelf life.

Going for the unwrapped version not only potentially doubles food waste (probably the greatest environmental threat to humanity), it can cause a nutrient decline of up to 90%.

And from replies:

My understanding is that (nutrient decline) occurs at the early stages of the production, by the time the unwrapped broccoli has got to the store it’s has already declined a great deal. This is wrapped within a really short time frame from picking, so retains a huge amount of nutrients.

And this is some Dune shit:

It would not surprise me if they were wrapped in the picking fields.
Huge bits of kit are hauled into fields to process food asap.
This includes blast freezers for frozen food. They are frozen within a hour of picking.

Mostly sensible looking predictions, interesting set of topcs: Enterprise software, phone form factor, SF / NYC tech rivalry apparently, Crypto as dissident tech, fall of grad school, biotech bubble, microplastics health fears, campaign growth hacking, and SV startup scam.

Great, scary photograph. More than the boats I noticed previous high water mark on the riverbanks.

They found that some reusable alternatives never manage to reach that break-even point because of the energy and water used each time a reusable item is washed.
...
On the positive side of the ledger for reusables, nine of the 12 reusables were able to reach the break-even point, even when washed after every use.

I am probably still mad about all the straws hype.

For example, reusable bamboo drinking straws and two reusable sandwich storage options — beeswax wrap and silicone bags — never reached the break-even point in any of the three environmental impact categories assessed in the study: energy use, global warming potential, and water consumption.

Either infuriating or upsetting how long we have known about this and done nothing.

HN discussion, including some good comments like this:

The time for decisive action was at least a decade ago, but there's no harm in starting now — it just means that the transition to alternative energy sources must be more abrupt and more investment must be allocated to remedial technologies that can work towards undoing at least some portion of the damage we have done to our biosphere.

Let historians and the next generations worry about whose fault it was. It is more important to secure for the next generation a sustainable and habitable future, than it is to look back at past hubris and wonder where it went wrong.

Don't know if they have a real product yet, but exciting to see meat alternatives other than beef!

Ambitious thing to estimate - I don't even try to predict a week ahead!

Some things to get excited about:

• mRNA tech
• geothermal power
• in-orbit manufacturing of things that cannot exist on Earth(!)

I think this also. We have the means to solve so many pressing problems but choose not to do so.

We possess the resources and production necessary to provide every human being on Earth with a comfortable living: adequate food, housing, health, and happiness. We have decided not to do so. We have achieved what one may consider the single unifying goal of the entire history of humanity: we have eliminated natural scarcity for our basic resources. We have done this, and we choose to deny our fellow humans their basic needs, in the cruel pursuit of profit. We have more empty homes than we have homeless people. America alone throws away enough food to feed the entire world population. And we choose to let our peers die of hunger and exposure.

Longer growing seasons, larger areas of workable land, and parts becoming more hospitable at the same time other regions of the world become uninhabitable due to heat.

Mind-boggling stats on solar and batteries. I did not know that we probably reached peak greenhouse emissions in 2019!

Interesting estimates and numbers - clientside savings really add up.

In fact, it is probably the most effective use of my time when it comes to reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Just last week I reduced global emissions by an estimated 59.000 kg CO2 per month by removing a 20 kB JavaScript
dependency in Mailchimp for WordPress. There’s no way I can have that kind of effect in other areas of my life.

Day-to-day negative effects of pollution on indiviudals

We need solutions that are less terrible for the environment, but 'living in harmony with nature' is basically a fallacy; seeking that is longing for an age that never existed.

Why haven’t we stopped climate change? We’re not wired to empathize with our descendants. Artificial distance that we add to 'other people'

Personal triggers are more persuasive that any other arguments or data. Future and far away people are harder to imagine than seeing change in a place you know. Image from ShowYourStripes is striking.