The only technology that should be on that list, since using it would enable all the others to thrive: UwU hungry guillotine
Sure, and then what? If we keep the systems around that created this situation in the first place, we’ll end up back where we started, just with new rich people.
Just to pick out the example of veganism: If all rich people are dead, but the masses still want cheap meat every single day, they WILL definitely reinvent factory farming, with all it’s horrible environmental and ethical consequences.
We have the technologies. The list goes on and on and on. We just need to employ them instead of waiting further for magical fixes.
Posting and liking memes is great, but real change comes from actions. If you are as concerned as we are about climate change, please consider joining or supporting climate activists near you.
We don’t need new technologies to overcome the issue of global warming itself; we need them to overcome the issue of human nature. People (in the population level sense, not individually) are not good at long term thinking. Solving global warming with current technologies will require a change in lifestyle from just about everyone. It’s the kind of change that will have no perceivable reward to most people. That’s why a lot of those solutions like biking, veganism, etc, will never catch on.
We have seen, that people and societies are extremely adaptable to changes in lifestyle. The transformation of the Netherlands to a cycling -friendly country for example. Car free city centers. People were very opposed to them before. But once the changes were made, people were happy with them and adapted to the new options. There’s also negative examples where people adapted to new negative lifestyles such as car centric cities. Or smog, pollution, garbage landfills, or rivers that one is not allowed to swim in due to pollution. People are surprisingly adaptable to new conditions. We just have to do it.
I think biking has a much higher chance; improved fitness and health, and improved mental health from increased activity and time outdoors are tangible benefits people would notice in a not too short amount of time.
Not to mention the money you save by not having to fuel up a vehicle. Gas is very expensive where I live. (1.50$/L in Canada atm)
Trains are based. Fight me car stans
Thanks!
I mean, some breakthroughs with large battery tech would be nice to really take advantage of solar and wind.
We’re pretty much there on flow batteries and a few others. The nice thing about grid storage is that kwh per kg is far less important than it is for EVs. That opens up a ton of other options.
Pretty much just need mass production at this point.
Has someone already produced a large-scale long-duration flow battery, like something that can handle a moderate energy grid?
I haven’t been following the tech very closely.
Oh cool, hadn’t heard about this facility. Thanks!
“No not that! I want to do EXACTLY as I did before but YOU do something about it. Can’t you like build a technology to suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere or something?”
Can we trail like monkeys to pick up trash?
It’s more a problem of all the human people want to live good lives, look at how many threads on the front page are talking about cost of living crisis and etc as serious social problems which need to be fixed - there’s a thread where everyone says we should all be in walking distance to all key amenities, I bet they all think that the average persons wage should be able to afford to enjoy those things regularly too and have access to healthy fresh food, good clothes, etc etc
The world people want where everyone has access to a good life has never existed, even in America there is still generational and regional poverty but globally it’s much more intense - it would be very unfair to say ‘sorry we’re not going to try and continue progress so you can live the same life I do, we’re actually going back so you get less and work harder - it’s not because further progress is impossible or anything but I personally don’t really like new technology so, well, sucks to be you I guess.’
The technology which you’re talking about carbon capture is an incredibly good technology and just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist. It’s not a magic wand of course but no one said it is, the uses with SAF and bioavailable carbon for example open up a lot of possibilities not just in rich nations but actually more so in developing nations allowing growth without oil infrastructure.
The problem with carbon capture is it’s not pulling anywhere near the amount of carbon from the air as needed and it’s currently very expensive. And it’s an easy out for politicians. A lot of the plans seem to be “we’ll do the easy stuff to reduce CO2 emissions, so how much more is the net emissions come to? Ok then we will do that much carbon capture… someday… somehow…”
And a good amount of it is pumping CO2 into oil wells… to extract more oil.
We really don’t know how well carbon capture will work on the large scales needed to balance the books on the “easy mode” net zero policies. Given how expensive it is, is it the most economically viable solution?
Sure the cost may decrease… but by how much?
A lot of question marks with it in terms of economic viability.
I do think it’s needed but I’d prefer it being something that’s just used for fuel that’s extremely difficult to replace, like fuel for airplanes. It seems feasible to tack on a big enough carbon tax on jet fuel to cover the cost of the carbon capture of that fuel. Sure airline travel will get more expensive, but that should be fine. But the level of carbon tax needed to cover the costs for ground transport using fossil fuels seems like it would be prohibitive.
What is the point of what you wrote?
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Yeah we already have the technology needed, we have to implement them.
And much of the tech is actually very old. Electric trains are like a century old. So for a lot of things, we have to re-implement technology we foolishly removed.
Oil was just a bad technology path. Gotta get back on the right path.
The technology path is fine, the adoption isn’t.
Path: plastics are miracle materials. Lots of great uses for it.
Adoption: mass producing single use throwaway shit everything.
Long term plastic aren’t as big of an issue as one time use plastics are. Wax paper and aluminum containers can both replace consumable bottles for instance.
Our battery tech is not up to par, and chances are, will never be. Need something in replacement. Nuclear, not the same, but good enough.
“We need new technologies that can be controlled by a megacorporation to make a select few rich, not things that individuals can do or use that can break the hold of existing monopolies”
And thus the shilling for nuclear power began.
nuclear is beyond most private corporations. The profit breav-even is too far into the future for all but governments.
Is nuclear a bad option? Only downsides I’ve heard are basically optics problems. Barring facilities that catastrophically failed on top of horrid safety policy negligence, they seem perfectly suited for baseline power production.
Cost. The reality is nuclear is not just more expensive than every other option, it’s a lot more. I remember seeing something like ten times the cost of solar, per whatever unit of energy
Thanks for that thought, I was confused who is arguing so much for nuclear that is not solving anything and is too expensive.
Shilling makes a lot of sense, but never came to me.
And downvotes without explanation, even here. I guess normal people are also under influence.
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Clean Fukushima corium first.
Pretty telling that the main counterpoint is referencing the second biggest nuclear disaster in history that made a staggering zero deaths.
Evacuation did almost 2500 deaths.
Evacuation was due to unwarranted panic as clearly stated by the Japanese government itself and the UN. People with your same mentality and irrational fear caused those deaths.
Tepco didn’t told the true so even a model had failed. You cannot rewrite the story it is done. Check the recent studies and numbers about rising cancers.
Cite these studies. Spoiler: they do not exist.
Your statement about zero death was false. Even the last UNSEAR report is in total contradiction with that (248 occurrences with the word “cancer” in the last one). EU large scale studies about nuclear workers can be found here : https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj-2022-074520 I can also provide studies specifically for Fukushima concerning thyroides, lung cancer and diabetic links.
There was lemmy in the 60s? /s
But I do agree if we find some way to deal with the nuclear waste nuclear energy would be perfect. I’m really hopeful for fusion research lately.
Nuclear waste is a largely solved issue. The volume of very radioactive waste is quite small, and safely contained with a variety of solutions.
It’s solved if your government gets off its ass about it. Reprocessing waste for reactors is one of the few places where nuclear makes sense. Way better than burying it for thousands of years.
Otherwise, the economics have ran past it. We have solutions without it; we just need to scale the up. There are a few other niches, like cargo ships, where they make sense. For general power use, no.
The issue is not the volume it is the duration.
TBH, nuclear waste is a political problem, not an engineering one. Finns figured it out, no reason other countries couldn’t.
Fusion of course is better (though some small amount of radioactive waste will still be produced due to neutron activation of the materials used in the equipment), but it seems like it’s been 10 years away for the past 60 years. And we really shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good—we need to phase out fossil fuels yesterday and fission is good enough for answering the needs of the industry; solar and wind is good enough for distributed residential power and also a good choice for poorer countries who lack the knowhow or even stability for safe operation of nuclear.
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Alright that’s funny XD
Sure, on board, but we the people would still need to then build a new world with different systems valuing different things. Most of those things are on that list.
Without the individual changing, we’d just end up swapping rich people.
You forgot, Work from Home.
and reforestation.
I feel that’s nested under veganism since consuming that way would leave far more land to be wild/reforested.
You need to actually plant and manage the forest. Letting fields go to fallow wont be enough. I’m talking about selecting tree species that grow fast and intake carbon at a higher rate then others and then cutting, processing, and replanting in a rotation pattern(so wild life and move from section to section).
Also, many people are vegans because of animal ethics or because it’s trendy, but aren’t really thinking about larger issues. Think of all the celebrities that are vegan, but fly private jets.
I’d like to see effort put into restoring the land back to how it was before our initial interventions. But I do think after that’s done, leaving it alone to allow wild animals to repopulate the area is probably right. That land was doing just fine before we came along.
Also, many people are vegans because of animal ethics or because it’s trendy, but aren’t really thinking about larger issues.
Most vegans would say they’re doing it for animal rights, yes. This doesn’t preclude vegans from caring about the other good reasons for going plant-based. At very least, carrying animal rights further, it makes sense that it would help animal welfare to repair some of the damage we’ve done.
One of the most visible vegans I know of talks about this so it’s definitely on vegan’s minds.
Think of all the celebrities that are vegan, but fly private jets.
Yeah that ain’t me or most vegans bud.
Yeah that ain’t me or most vegans bud.
I was just using them as a high visibility, well known example. No where did I say they represent the majority. Personally, I know many people who actually think plastic recycling works, so they don’t do anything to curb their plastic use. Many, many people take on one or two positive actions and are hyper proud of it. I know someone who’s super proud that his car gets above average mpg, but is constantly accelerating and braking and ruining his mpg. Covid response of people taking half measures and being proud of it.
I already have a second hand and telling people to grow a second hand just feels ableist to those who can’t. /j
nuclear power should definitely be one of those technologies listed
The Problem with nuclear Power is, that there isn’t a guarantee for reasonable pricing. There simply isn’t any experience on how much it really costs to build new power plants.
If you want to take a deeper look into the topic: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/05/what-does-nuclear-power-really-cost/
Can you defend it on economic grounds, rather than outdated talking points used against Greenpeace in the 90s?
20 years ago a few key technologies were still missing, like grid storage battery technology. But there are multiple promising ways now. Unfortunately lack of massive funding for research and development and patents means we’ll have to wait another 20 years to produce them really cheaply on the free market. Otherwise it would be unfair to the poor inventor! /s
Aren’t flywheel energy storages (invented by James Watt and improved over time) not suitable energy storages for electrical grids?
No, flywheel is not cheap enough and too complicated. Pumped hydro is cheapest, but only available at very few location. Lithium batteries are a waste or misappropriation (lithium should be recycled for mobile use) and there aren’t enough.
The two battery types that seem to work are liquid metal batteries that are made out of dirt cheap and abundant materials (although there might be problems there still), and flow batteries. Kite power also seems to provide more energy for less material costs (no huge foundations and towers needed).
There are also gravity batteries: https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene
The gravity energy system would be able to store 2MW of power and integrate into the local energy grid. … Scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) found that the world’s abandoned mine shafts could store up to 70TWh of power - roughly the equivalent of global daily electricity consumption.
Also in Finland, but different technology “sand batteries” https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61996520
Finnish researchers have installed the world’s first fully working “sand battery” which can store green power for months at a time.
The developers say this could solve the problem of year-round supply, a major issue for green energy.
Using low-grade sand, the device is charged up with heat made from cheap electricity from solar or wind. The sand stores the heat at around 500C, which can then warm homes in winter when energy is more expensive.
While I think there is still no working production model, Iron Salt Batteries are very promising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery
There are different options, not each one is suitable for every place, but seams possible that combination can help us achieve needed reduction in fossil fuel usage when sun is down and no wind.
Thanks for the links, sand sounds interesting. I believe gravity batteries outside of pumped hydro just need too much “structure” to store energy and then just have too little capacity. Unfortunately there is sometimes a little bit too much hype about cool ideas that don’t pan out. There is also an idea I think for an electric train / rail cars full of ballast being driven up a rail on a hill and then moving down to release electricity. Just a lot of effort.
And yeah thermal batteries should solve one of the biggest consumers, heating. Lots of possibilities. Molten salt works also. I think if you just use water to store heat for the winter you need about the size of a big Olympic swimming pool under your house. But with wind instead of solar you don’t even need to store that much.
An important thing I believe is that we have nearly unlimited access to energy with solar and wind turbines / kite power. It requires massive production efforts but you can extract so much energy from sunshine that efficiencies of batteries aren’t even that important. Just that you can use cheap and sustainable materials, can recycle them, and can have enough energy density.
So the possibilities are definitely there, but we really neglected to push R&D and massively fund multiple startups for each technology. And we need to suspend patents or drastically shorten their lifespan to like 4 years or so.
The biggest technology needed is actually excavators so we can dig ditches everywhere to soak up rain water and refill aquifers. Also building retaining walls, terraces and swales using permaculture style water management to reforest degraded grazing lands.
I think we need those excavators do dig our own graves, because this will probably not happen.
Yeah this needed to have started decades ago like when they figured out the model for climate change in the 50s
By “the 50s,” do you mean the 1850s, when Eunice Newton Foote discovered the greenhouse effect, and calculated that CO2 emissions would change the climate? And when John Tyndall published the same thing, because the scientific community ignored her because she was a woman? Yeah, we could have started 170 years ago, but people just aren’t wise enough to do anything about climate change until it’s too late.
Yeah I am only aware of research from the 1950s and 60s but I don’t doubt it is based on a previous hundred years of research
Either way, we’ve had plenty of warning, which is why it’s so maddening.
Even now when climate change has visible effects, we can’t seem to get our shit together and do what we need to for our own sakes
HEMP
Degrow already!
Veganism is not technology. Also meat tastes delicious for most of the regular population. Proceeds to nom a chicken
There has been some research to make products that are compatible with veganism e.g. lab-grown meat. The latest technological discovery in the news was ‘meaty rice’
Disclaimer: I also eat meat since I don’t trust my intestines to fully rely on plant-based nutrients. I do, however, think there is merit to how the industrialization of farming has been destroying the environment, especially with the excess of methane from cattle.
We should be focusing on making orbital platforms where to keep the cattle so they don’t pollute rather than not focusing on non space stuff. Smh.
I have a better solution to get a meaty taste that is 100% practical and actually being used for millions of years, even before humans existed: Just eat meat.
It’s not necessarily the meaty “taste”. Many people have health complications with their digestive systems (one example I can think of is Celiac’s) that can make it near-impossible to get nutrients from plant-based food. If you can grow meat in the lab, you can get animal-sourced nutrients without hurting animals (for vegans) nor large resources that are typically used for climate-damaging meat industries (for everyone)
I know a medicine for diseases like that and you can get it pretty much everywhere, it’s called “Just eat meat”, it’s been working for millions of years.
Meat used to taste delicious.
I was raised pescatarian and started eating a little bit of meat in university, it was pretty good. I could definitely understand the hype, meat was pretty delicious. But for me personally, I just don’t get the craving for it. Eventually I just ended up going back to a near vegan diet because it’s what I like to cook, and it’s so cheap. I’m not vegan, but 99% of what I’ve cooked at home in the last 10 years is.
However, I was craving charcoal chicken for like two weeks straight, so the other day my friends and I rode down to the place everyone goes to. We made a proper day of it with our bikes and picnic blankets. The chicken was cooked perfectly, really moist and falling off the bone. The seasoning on the skin was delicious, I can see why that place is so popular.
But the chicken had no flavour of its own.
Taste wise, it could have been anything cooked with the seasoning rub over the charcoal spit. A block of tofu would have had the same flavour.
Texture is the only unique experience, and I’m sure there will be a brand of meat replacement out there that has nailed the texture (but not nailed the taste) so it really isn’t long now until there are viable alternatives. I haven’t really tried many meat replacement products because I’m allergic to potato and e160c and those two ingredients are in a surprising number of vegan packaged proteins.
I was disappointed with my chicken. I thought maybe I’d over sold it in my mind, as my friends confirmed that yup, this is good chicken, I’m being picky. But when I said “it’s just not as good as I remember from uni” and then my friends did a full 180° and agreed that yes, in the last 10 years since I’ve had chicken like this, meat quality has gone downhill, and chicken isn’t good anymore, but what we were eating was good chicken, and that they all still like chicken, even though it’s disgusting by direct comparison.
Now I’m curious how different the quality is between home raised chickens vs store bought chicken meat. Because it’s got to be insane, even if both birds are the same species of heart attacks on legs.
My brother raised chickens and we went to his place for a dinner with one of the chickens he raised. It was probably the best chicken I have ever had. The store chicken barely holds a candle.
Now this was probably over 10 years ago, and I know the farm chickens have “improved” but the improvements are more… for production. Not for quality and taste.
