I refuse defeatism
I refuse defeatism
139 comments
-
I approve of the overall message but indoor farming is kind of insane in the present day. It uses incredible amounts of energy and our scarce building materials to do something we can do much more easily outside.
Long term it might be important but I don’t think it makes sense until we solve the current energy crisis.
-
Initial upfront costs are heavy but you would be saving all of the transport and logistics costs for the lifetime of the facility. Aeroponics are also a lot less resource intense than growing in the dirt.
-
Especially for some crops, like leafy greens. Having a semi-sterile environment can also mean pesticide-free crops. (Or at least, that's my understanding).
Way less water use and transport costs for a superior (fresher, pesticide-free) product.
It only makes sense for some crops, though. Ain't nobody growing watermelons or carrots in urban vertical farms.
-
Has anyone broken down the difference in energy between artificially creating growing conditions in the middle of cities compared to just transporting the food from where it grows easily? Trains and ships which transport most food are incredibly energy efficient per ton transported
Trains can transport one ton of goods 470 miles on one gallon of fuel and ships can transport one ton of goods 600 miles on one gallon of fuel. If a urban farm can produce one ton of food it needs to consume less than a few gallons of fuel's worth of energy in lighting and other city-specific infrastructure in order to come out ahead of growing food where it grows best
-
I think it's outweighed by the possibilities of hydroponic farming to reduce overall land (and therefore fossil fuel) use for agriculture.
-
Do hydroponic plants have fewer nutrients compared to soil grown plants?
-
No worries for pesticides or water use, as well.
-
-
Using solar panels to power artificial lighting so you can vertically stack farms directly inside cities doesn't make any sense from a sustainability perspective.
But greenhouses in the suburbs that are tied into the city's thermal grid and seasonal thermal energy store is the future of agriculture IMO.
By enclosing fields in greenhouses you decrease the land, water, pesticide, and fertilizer requirements, while also eliminating fertilizer runoff and the possibility of soil depletion from tilling. By tying a greenhouse into a thermal grid the greenhouse can act as a solar thermal collector in the summer while maybe even condensing the water that evaporates through the plants for reuse. Then you can use that same heat to heat homes during the winter or extend the growing season in the greenhouse even further.
https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/storage/world-s-largest-thermal-energy-storage-to-20240409
https://ag.umass.edu/greenhouse-floriculture/fact-sheets/heat-storage-for-greenhouses
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/152874/a-greenhouse-boom-in-china
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150070/almerias-sea-of-greenhouses
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/netherlands-agriculture-technology/ (Yes I know they use artificial lighting in a lot of these, and yes I know a lot of the value of their agricultural exports comes from flowers, but the point is it's another example of large scale greenhouse use. Also they do still produce quite a bit of food in a small area, in addition to the flowers.)
-
Oh I fully agree that greenhouses have a role to play in food production. But that’s not typically what’s meant by indoor farming. That’s a separate but related concept.
That said, you may be slightly overstating the benefits here. Greenhouses can actually be very vulnerable to pests and diseases due to the high humidity, year-round warmth, and lack of natural predators. In theory they’re isolated but in practice it’s very likely some organism you don’t want will sneak in somehow. Pollination can also be a challenge for crops that need that.
I think these challenges can be overcome but there’s a lot of work to be done on them still.
-
-
-
Building out more and more renewables doesn't mean anything if emissions aren't falling - and they aren't. Since 2021, nearly 4 full years, the world has closed less than 1% of active coal power plants.
The buildout of renewables has arrived hand-in-hand with an increase in total energy usage. The energy mix has improved greatly in favor of renewables, tons of CO2 per KWh is way down, unfortunately we just use more KWh so total emissions are still rising.
Everything in the meme is a leading indicator for positive change, which is wonderful, but the actual change needs to materialize on a rather short timetable. Stories about happy first derivatives don't count for much.
-
From your link it, for me, it seems like emissions are platooning, similar to a technological S curve. Even if China and India are growing exponentially, reduction in other countries are enough to slow down the process significantly (specially if you zoom in in the last 10 years).
It’s very hard to predict change, but I suspect the deprecation of solutions that emit lots of emissions is about to skyrocket.
-
We might already have reached peak carbon emissions. There's also the thing where renewables are so much cheaper that it's in most countries best self interest to build renewables.
The thing the world is doing now is more energy but the cheapest one is electricity so more electricity. The duck curve is an energy storage opportunity that's being taken advantage of more and more. Things are heading in the right direction but it's not fast enough.
The next emissions on the chopping block are household heating and cement and low-med industrial heat with more advanced heat pumps or heat pumps set up in series.
I've decided to become cautiously optimistic recently the more I learn about how science is advancing the renewables despite governments sometimes being in the way.
-
Since 2021, nearly 4 full years, the world has closed less than 1% of active coal power plants.
Closing will come later, when alternatives are widely available. What renewable energy does currently - at least here - is forcing those plants temporarily out of the market, especially during summer months and windy weather. The plants will exist and stay ready in case of need for well over a decade, maybe even two - but they will start up ever more rarely.
Technically, the deal is: we don't have seasonal energy storage. Short term storage is being built - enough to stabilize the grid for a cold windless hour, then a day, then a week... that's about as far as one can go with batteries and pumped hydro.
To really get the goods one has to add seasonal storage or on-demand nuclear generation. The bad news is that technologies for seasonal storage aren't fully mature yet, while nuclear is expensive and slow to build. There's electrolysis and methanation, there's iron reduction, there are flow batteries of various sorts, there's seasonal thermal storage already (a quarter step in the right direction)...
...but getting the mixture right takes time. Instead of looking at the number of closed plants, one should look at the sum of emissions. To remain hopeful, the sum should stop growing very soon.
-
Instead of looking at the number of closed plants, one should look at the sum of emissions
That was in the link I posted. Emissions are Currently at record highs.
Slowing growth isn't enough; we need significant, sustained, reductions in the very near future, and negative emissions and sequestering carbon in the medium term.
None of that is happening at a scale that would inspire optimism.
-
Technically, the deal is: we don’t have seasonal energy storage.
Thankfully, we are actually solving this problem by just making solar panels comically cheap. We are going to solve seasonal swings in power demand by just spamming the ever-loving-hell out of solar panels. Solar is so vastly cheaper than nuclear that this is the better option.
If the panels are cheap enough, you can build enough of them to meet your needs even on a cloudy winter day. Then the rest of the year you have dirt-cheap energy. In turn, a lot of power-intensive industries can move to a seasonal model to take advantage of the nearly-free energy during the warmer months. We have a crop growing season, why not a steel smelting season, or an AI model training season?
-
One technology that's being developed that can help is high-voltage superconducting DC power, which can send power thousands of miles. So if it's a sunless, windless day in the Northeast they can send power from the Midwest to stabilize the grid.
Also, I'm very bullish on Iron-Air batteries for long-term grid-level storage.
-
-
Didn't Britian just close down it's last coal plant? Also Colorado is switching away as well. I thought natural gas was replacing coal?
-
-
Is it defeatist to face the facts that we have released more carbon in 2023 than any other year? Is it defeatist to realize not only are we polluting non-stop, we are also destroying the oceans, we are destroying ecosystems and we are destroying ourselves at a rate that we can't control? That a majority of people are content living their lives this way if it means they don't have to make the hard choice of having and using less? We're already well past 1°C and are not going to slowdown it seems until its too late.
-
CO2 emissions of the world excluding China have declined. Chinas emissions did fall in Q2 of this year.
Seriously China has economic trouble, which slows down energy demand growth. The US has run the massive inflation reduction act, which seems to be working somewhat well and Europe was hit hard by the energy crisis reducing emissions in the EU through lower consumption and faster green roll out and Russia as its fossil fuel exports fall. On top of that green technologies like solar panels, wind trubines, electric vehicles, heat pumps and so forth become cheaper all the time. It is certainly possible that we can achieve peak emissions soon.
-
I think it won't matter. We have enough heat in the pipeline to wipe the surface of the Earth. Here's a crisis report from Richard Crim saying, in essense, we done fucked up
-
-
Whoa, whoa, street-preacher.
No, it's not defeatist to state facts. It's what you do or say immediately after that makes the difference.
Now, we're all feeling the same kinds of stress that would make any of us rattle on like that, and you must know you're not alone or even in the minority with your concern. The majority of people - polls show - want to avoid or to blunt that fate we worry is coming. And with the world swinging a little conservative for a while, it'll be even harder to make the changes now we had to make 20 years ago.
But trust in your fellow person instead of cursing them for indolents when you don't know their situation. If you go off like this at people on the edge of moving from subsistence to again having the opportunity to join you at the protests, you may risk losing them as an ally.
Softly, softly.
-
I am cursing myself for being too weak to do the necessary, to give up on the unnecessary plastic junk, to give up on driving and all the industrial products that are slowly killing us in one way or another. If I can't do it how can I preach doing what is necessary to others? I feel like a hypocrit, caught between a fossil fuel filled life of comfort and a future of hardship that I feel fully unprepared to even talk about, never mind living through
-
-
It's like praising all the cabin cars getting repainted with eco-friendly paint while the train has already gone off the cliff and is plunging toward the ground.
-
Maybe these are just the transition costs
-
At least partly. No one seems to take into account the carbon costs of manufacturing things like solar cells, stuff like that.
-
-
Interest in solar panels has skyrocketed, and yet at least 50% of the world population won't stop driving ICE cars to work every day any time soon. While the ocean surface temperatures are on an exponential trajectory.
A climate catastrophy with mass deaths is inevitable. I'd be preparing instead of sugar-coating.
And after a few billion humans die, we can deploy solar panels and start living sustainably.
-
Yes, this exactly! The polls about sustainable living mean nothing when the ice caps melt, when the wildlife has been reduced to basically nothing and when we are all struggling to breathe with no trees and no plankton to produce oxygen.
-
-
-
By the power invested in me by, well, nobody whatsoever, can I just take a minute to say, let's all cool down a little in the comments!
There's a lot of arguing against:
- The idea that acknowledging the tragic reality of climate change makes you defeatist
- The idea that because we have had some great advantages in green tech we can sit back and let climate change fix itself
I don't see anyone making those arguments here though! Just lots of people concerned about climate change with different skews of how positive/negative we should feel.
Personally, I swing between powerful optimism and waking in terror at 3:00am for the future we're hurtling towards. I'm sure other people are the same, so let's just be friendly to the fact that other people are in different vibes to us.
There are some people working together very well right now to dismantle the climate, so let's all remember that when we're talking with each other.
Peace and love!
-
I worry that climate defeatism has become a religion, and it will be difficult to separate it from policy discussion going forward.
-
Things just shifted instantly from "nothing needs to be done" to "nothing can be done."
-
The Climate Denier's prayer:
The climate isn't changing,
and even if it was,
It's not humans that are causing it,
and even if we are,
It's better for the economy if we ignore it,
and even if that's not true,
There's nothing we can do about it anyways.
-
-
Almost as if the people in charge of oil and coal and such want us to be fighting about this type of shit...
-
climate defeatism has become a religion
Going outside to 90⁰ weather in October is a religion?
-
A few folks I know switched smoothly from "climate change is fake" to "maybe it's real but there's nothing we can do about it at this point. Might as well live it up." Basically anything to avoid change at any level.
I think that's the defeatism they're talking about here, not people pointing out the issues.
-
-
Acknowledging reality is not the same thing as defeatism or "not doing anything." I'd argue that putting your head in the sand and ignoring news/information you don't like is more damaging and closely related to the majority of the world's efforts over the past 50+ years.
-
Thinking everything is fine leads to apathy. Thinking there's nothing we can do leads to apathy. The correct thought is that it's bad, but we can fix it.
-
The correct thought... Wow, you solved the climate.
Sorry for being sarcastic. This take has been proven wrong for... forever? Humankind will not fix anything - we will do too little too late and suffer through the consequences as we always did.
I'm not saying it's not worth a try. I'm saying it won't work because not everyone is trying. By far not everyone.
-
-
Yep.
One could also show the same meme template with stats where every bad development is even accelerating, spikes in co2-rise, record new numbers of consumption and pollution, the Amazon and other carbon sinks getting razed at growing speeds, a lot of carbon sinks turning into carbon emitters, nations voting for extremists who don't care for ecology, glaciers and sea ice melting, all sorts of storms getting stronger and more destructive, the speed with which we are approaching or already have reached tipping points globally and locally...
Yeah, but let's soothe ourselves with... cosmetics? I'm not denying that there's some positive changes but that's like trying to extinguish a house burning to the ground and engulfed in flames with one bucket of water.
My take is: People want to have a better world without changing their lifestyle - simply leave everything as it is and make it in some magical way non destructive and non polluting. EVs are a shining example of that - still ridiculous use of resources, but somehow they are "better".
If you think that way you are part of the problem and part of its denial.
-
That is a good point about not wanting anything to change. We can not continue to live how we've lived if this will be solved. Reductions in population should help reduce demand and land use (enforced with law, of course), but some things people enjoy will have to go. You don't need to eat foods grown thousands of miles away or to eat beef every day. You may have to endure temperature discomfort, lose personal transportation options, etc. Even these things are small, government (especially militaries) and business will need to be held to account and have their emissions massively reduced.
-
-
-
Indoor farming isn't scalable. At least not with the models that are being done now. They work for niche crops, but not staple carb sources like potatoes and grains. They can be profitable, but aren't a catch all solution.
The ocean cleaning projects also don't scale. We should be focused on keeping the trash from getting into it first by switching to recyclable and biodegradable packaging and forcing the fishing industry to switch back to hemp nets.
-
Idk about your first point but The Ocean Cleanup, has been doing great work creating plastic filters for the worlds most polluting river. I understand not creating the waste in the first place would be most efficient but this organization is doing a good job cleaning up the mess.
-
All true, but categorically the problem is growing much faster than the solution. It probably always will be unless it's stopped from the source.
-
-
I don't think that scalable and profitable are goals of indoor farming. It's done for self sustainability.
-
staple crops have too many subsidies to be a good source of comparison, and staple crops aren't very healthy for people in general.
-
Staple crops aren't just your cheap empty calories. Legumes, carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, soybeans, onions, and some very healthy grains are all staple crops. Even the humble potato is fine, though many preparations of it are unhealthy. Take this soup:
- Lentils
- Carrots
- Onions
- Celery
- Potatoes
- Beans
- Vegetable broth made from the odds and ends
- Herbs & spices
-
Regardless of the politics that modern staple crops are associated with, you still need calories. Why do you think rice was a second currency for a very long time in some parts of the world.
Also, the example of indoor farming that's near me is absolutely running off of government money, at least for now. They got a grand to setup in an old warehouse in downtown, but also own some empty property in the neighborhood. This could be just them future proofing or it would be them looking to flip the property once the main site raises the property values.
And then there's the MIT Food Computer, which promised a lot and delivered nothing. The smaller scale the production, the less efficient it is. If you want to feed the world's population without a steep decline in that population, you're going to need outdoor farming in addition to the indoor stuff.
-
Subsidies keep the farms alive in the first place. It's simply not profitable to grow anymore. We make so much it's too cheap to sell. Therefore the volume required and the margins are so razor thin. It's make a profit or be bough-out by a bigger company.
-
-
-
Today I was citing The Materialist Conception of History by Plekhanov and noticed that it had a huge spike in downloads this year. Gave me a spark of hope
-
what is it about?
-
Historical materialism which is an analysis of history through the lense of dialectical materialism which is the philosophical and scientific basis for Marxism. Essentially viewing history as a continuous development of the means of production motivated by societal contradictions. The focus is specifically on conflict that arises between the owning classes and the laboring classes of each historical mode of production.
I just smoked so this may not be the best explanation but its the best I got in me rn
-
-
-
Real question: Most of things listed are consumer level changes. Isn't the large majority of global warming being caused by industry emissions?
-
Why perchance has the interest in a self-sustaining life skyrocketed you think? Could it be because people can barely afford food anymore?
-
Not just that, it’s a combination of factors. Sustainable thinking, independence, a connection to the world and self and much more.
-
-
kind of an ironic choice of template for the message
-
Disposable diaper use is going down, and a decreasing proportion is getting landfilled.
-
-
I was on a road trip this weekend, and we had to clean the windshield 5 times. So it looks like the bugs are making a comeback thanks to restrictions on Monsanto products.
-
Don't forget the huge investments by cities to build public and active transit. My city has invested over $1B into rail expansion projects and $500M into BRT. They're currently tearing up half of downtown to widen sidewalks along with building bike lanes and bus lines. Things are changing more quickly than they seem. My city also advocated for a state law that was passed to fund passenger rail between 2 large nearby cities
-
To be fair, as much as we should highlight the good news.
I wouldnt say It is defeatism to say there is a hell of a lot more bad stuff going, we should highlight the good stuff while recognizing we have a ways to go.
-
Indoor farming is really exclusive for just a few produce tbh. Majority of vegie/fruits can't be realistically indoor farmed.
At least i got my lettuce.
-
Idk... Iceland is doing pretty well with some large greenhouses. I was pretty amazed at the variety and quality of their fruits and veggies. That island has to deal with some serious issues but seem to be handling them quite well overall!
-
Greenhouses are not vertical skyscraper farms.
-
-
-
my mind rapidly shifts from defeatism to optimism practically every week
-
Nuclear is the way to go. If we can't manage that we never had a shot as an intelligent race to begin with.
-
-
This is what I’m banking on, things get bad but that would motivate us more and it would become easier and easier to address.
Having said that, I think degrowth is the correct way; the above is risky but better than doom and gloom.
-
thank you.
-
One day I will die, and sooner than I wish. Maybe some effects of climate change will do me in. At least nobody can say I haven't done what I could to stop it. It's what I do for a living.
-
It certainly hasn't defeated MY adoption expectations, and don't even talk to me about stock share prices for anything involving solar.
-
I hate stocks, but I hope yours go to the moon!
-
me too...
-
-
-
So what is this indoor farming for cities?
I remember those boxes to grow salad in, vertically stacked, interesting concept because no need for toxic stuff and almost no water, and it's right there so no need for shipping.
-
You still need fertilizer and electricity that is less efficient than sunlight to grow indoors.
But somebody once gave terrible math about being able to feed a city from a vertical skyscraper farm and it's been latched onto very hard as a futurism solution.
-
Been growing plants for 30-years, using zero sunlight to full sunlight. The difference in energy use, manpower, all that, is stunning.
Food is food because it contains loads of energy. We eat corn not oak leaves. That energy has to be put into the plant, at a loss, to get energy out. TANSTAAFL, literally.
-
Precisely that, hydroponics to be more precise. It’s not everything, but a great start
-
-
Also the US is at about 40% carbon free energy production (renewables + nuclear), which is pretty swag.
-
Defeatists are just lazy. Call them out for being unwilling to actually do something about the climate.
-
One could argue that people who soothe themselves with cosmetics are the ones who are unwilling to really tackle the problem. See my other comment for details.
-
-
I read that the production of solar is also counter productive. Don't quote me on that cause I read it when I was like 10 maybe.
-
The materials needed for solar are very toxic, and hard to remove, we also need a lot of them. We get these from places like China and Russia cheap because they don't mind their citizens dying so much as they make a profit. That cheapness is the cornerstone to every renewable project today. If we found ourselves in a position unable to trade with China/Russia, we would have to mine it in our own borders, poison our own land, water, and citizens. America could just return to it's own petrol fields, but other countries would face serious challenges.
-
I'm not saying none of this is true, but at the very least most of this is misleading. We're figuring out how to recycle old solar panels on an industrial scale: https://youtu.be/FCtEWveySsA
But progress is a bit slower than expected, mostly also because panels are a lot longer-lived than previously assumed (this is a good thing).
Yes, panels use rare minerals, but so does basically everything we consume and use nowadays. There's two answers to that.
A) does it still make sense climate-wise to use these resources in solar panels? This is what Life Cycle Analyses are for. In general, throughout their life cycle, PV modules help prevent more CO2 emissions than their manufacturing process releases, i.e. they are a net gain (https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/1/252). This is similar to EV vehicles, which break even around 60k km driven depending on your electricity generation (if memory serves https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2023/733112/IPOL_STU(2023)733112_EN.pdf)
b) is there a way to manufacture PV panels less resource-intensive and maybe even without relying on (Chinese) rare earth minerals as much? Yes there is. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/ISE-Sustainable-PV-Manufacturing-in-Europe.pdf and see also sources above for next-gen differences.
That being said, for now it's still economically more attractive (usually) to implement Chinese panels because they're flooding the market. Still, it's a net gain as outlined.
-
-
-
Solar is cheaper than ever? I mean sure, but you still have to pay for it upfront, and by the time you got your money back you need some new panels. Also i like solar power and everything, but i'm not at home during the day, so i would produce energy for no one. Or i'd get a big ass battery, which is super expensive and doesn't last as long as the panels. And no, where i live, you don't get any money anymore for the extra power you produce.
It's also cool that the ocean is being cleaned, but we'll just produce more garbage in shorter time. So far we did plastic straws, which was a big thing that a lot of people are still mad about. And it was just basically a marketing campaign because a turtle had a straw in it's nose. The garbage that is being fished out of the ocean doesn't just disappear. It's better than chilling in the ocean i guess, but it's still garbage twice the size of texas that has to be delt with.
-
For your first point, sure let’s consider that the case, then the old panels can be recycled and you get more efficient ones, not a bad trade.
Also, share with your neighbour the extra energy? Or contact your municipal office to pass a tax cut/payback? There’s so much opportunity there! (Just imagine if your city passes such an initiative and others adopt too! Less reliance on fossil fuels!)
On your second point, yeah, we need more innovation in recycling technology. Hopefully we get there too 😊
-
As to solar, payback is usually 7-15 years depending on overhead costs, while most panels are still at 80% output in 20 to 25 years. Batteries don’t last as long as panels when being used to near capacity, but they’ll still do about half the lifespan of the panels. Batteries prices are also falling about as quickly as panel prices, with us now being in the neighborhood of 100 dollars per kwh of storage.
I also think it’s a bit of a misnomer, especially on this instance, to consider these things completely dead and worthless at 80% effectiveness, especially when that is still far more effective than a brand new top of the line one a decade ago. I think that there are a lot of people in the world who wouldn’t mind the system taking up 25% more space if they could get them much cheaper, it’s just that much like EV battery range, a lot of people are finding that they don’t really need to replace the thing away at 80% capacity in the first place.
-
-
This seems like a weird argument. One has to come before the other. You won't see a noticable reduction CO2 emissions until renewables are primary sources for probably decades. Sure that's not great but it's where we're at.
-
Everybody in this post is a sustainability specialist.
-
It is catching up, but slowly with still quite a ways to go (at least from 2022 data) . . . the probem is population and demand can grow exponentially too - or if not they can have s-curves with short term exponential growth. Especially for, say, a developing economy that is growing car ownership/usage, or is transitioning from high infant mortality to low and fertility hasn't dropped as it seems to after economic growth.
End result - fossil fuel use has also grown, a lot, over the last 30 years. Even despite the ramp up of renewables. Both in total energy source, and as a source of electricity.
What seems to work best from this data is decent sized economic recession like 2008 (a bit) and a pandemic (a bit more) - just need them to last a bit longer. /s /not-s
The other thing that is quite helpful is stuff like clean air regulation (for example LCPD and IED) - here is the UK electricity source graph as an example of coal switch off following that type of regulation.
But even there with direct regulation to shut the large coal plants (over about 30 year period), it has been gas that takes up the slack. But this is 100% politically driven regulation; nothing to do with the price of solar, or even windmills. It took the 70s recessions , smog choked cities, and a callous devil-posessed prime minister who literally set an army of violent thugs (with badges) on the coal miners to set up the conditions for that - otherwise we might still be stuck with coal a bit like Australia seems to struggle with. It helps that we can't do open cast mining here though so coal was economically redundant anyway.
-
It's not always up to us, but also countries like China that open a new coal plant every week.
-
Per capita energy use in China is under the threshold for sustainable usage, and they're hitting their climate goals a decade early.
Meanwhile, Europe remains a dumpster fire of emissions, while heavily consuming from China's surplus manufacturing.
Pointing to the other side of the ocean and saying "You guys need to fix it" has been an American remedy for too long. Now we're eating hurricane after hurricane as recompense.
-
i don't think china is the example you want to point to on that...
-
Ah yes I also forgot India.
But yes, China:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants/
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/27/energy/china-new-coal-plants-climate-report-intl-hnk/index.html/
https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-responsible-for-95-of-new-coal-power-construction-in-2023-report-says/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/climate/coal-plants-china.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-finRenewable energy means nothing if you're also poisoning the planet now does it?
-
-
Gotta power the factory that has to send garbage to america
-
-
indoor farming
This is opposite of reduction of enviromental harm
-
Try looking at facts. Data. Or, rather, don't if you don't want to become depressed.
-
You had me until the ocean cleanup.
The ocean cleanup doesn't even make a dent, it never will. The amount of trash we're dumping into the ocean is far higher than they could ever clean up. You have to fight the problem at the root, then you can think about cleaning it up. Otherwise it'll be fine to dump trash in the ocean "bc the cleanup guys will catch it"
-
Stop eating fish and the oceans will become cleaner. Most of the plastic trash that’s floating in the ocean comes from fishing ships. Like nets and lines.
-
-
Solar isn't scalable, clean, or sustainable. The only real option is nuclear. Most of the benefits to solar come from countries involved in multiple genocides, territorial expansion, and diplomatic saber-rattling. It's a neat toy for youtubers, but it's no real solution.
-
I'd be real curious if you can back those statements up with peer-reviewed sources.
For one thing, it's not exactly like Uranium is mined in democratic nations with strong labor protections.
Also, "it's a neat toy" they say, meanwhile Germany produces up to 15% of it's total energy by solar: https://www.agora-energiewende.de/daten-tools/agorameter/chart/today/power_generation/01.10.2023/30.09.2024/monthly
-
I'm pretty sure that guy just masturbates every night to Our Friend the Atom.
-
-
The issue with nuclear is the extremely high initial cost, and it's not as set and forget it as the propaganda wants you to think. In short, because of nuclear decay chains the power can't be just ramped up and down willy nilly, some of the byproducts poison the chain reaction and power needs to be managed. Having nuclear as the bearer of the minimal load with solar/wind/battery power for the variable load is the way I think works the best, but I'm not an expert.
-
139 comments