MIT scientists think they’ve discovered how to fully reverse climate change

8to24 · 2022-07-10T19:26:31+00:00

Blocked out sunlight isn't the answer. We need to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Currently we are at 420 ppm carbon in the atmosphere. Humans evolved and thrived at between 200-280 ppm.

We need to plant trees and bamboo wherever possible while reducing our emissions. We need to stop burning down the rainforests and use more climate friendly agriculture practices like hydroponics and adjust our diets for greater levels of sustainability.

Everyone understands what needs to be done. The problem is the people who profit and are most heavily invested in the status quo aren't prepared to sacrifice their market dominance.

Ok-Process-9687 · 2022-07-09T14:44:15+00:00

I think the best thing for climate change would be if big corporations were held responsible for there fuck ups and huge waistings of resources

dwrfa · 2022-07-09T15:55:57+00:00

Love to hear it! I'm the scientist at Impossible that created these nuggets! It was a fun project to work on.

And this article is spot on. Switching from conventional meat is the most important individual choice one can make to reduce their climate footprint.

I_Am_The_Cattle · 2022-07-09T13:13:37+00:00

A dubious climate investment in my opinion and certainly not the best health investment. More effort is needed to support regenerative agriculture which can effectively put carbon back into the soil and make it healthier, while at the same time provides actual healthy food fit for humans.

sebmensink · 2022-07-05T00:30:00+00:00

This paper doesn’t actually suggest that. It basically uses reinforcement learning to come up with a set of taxes to fund a sovereign wealth fund based on voter preferences.

Edit: And how to distribute the profits.

psycho_pete · 2022-07-08T19:20:07+00:00

“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions."

The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.

howaboutthattoast · 2022-07-08T16:37:07+00:00

Plastics in meat and dairy... yet another reason to stop eating meat and dairy

DistributedDemocracy · 2022-07-08T13:25:17+00:00

Like right after WW2? Generally the most likely scenario from lower population is more prosperity per person. It's not a bad thing unless you think populations directly compete with each other, but population does very little compared to technology when it comes to production.

You can easily offset and production losses with ever improving technology far faster than demographics problems become any real problem.

Global demographics were always going to get funky. Old people were always going to live longer and population growth was always going to have to slow down.

These are all good things. Aging just means your healthcare is successful and shrinking happens to slowly that increased in technology easily offset them.

If population mattered than China and India would rule the world with unlimited production, but it's factories and machines that do most of the actual work and those are based on demand, which is based on your per capita income far more than your population.

High populations are only good for selling high volume cheap per unit prices stuff, which is the most annoying way to make money because of the logistics of distribution and the unreliable nature of income at lower levels.

Magthalion · 2022-07-07T10:42:51+00:00

Except psychological abuse and words can harm people, even drive them to suicide.

Words have been used throughout history to harm groups of people and justify taking away their rights. That childrens lesson is too simple and not a good one at that.

Developing "thick skin" is all well and good but everyone has a threshold.

IWantToDoThings · 2022-07-05T20:41:46+00:00

How'd you get 1.3 billion people into a single home?

pie_kun · 2022-07-04T16:33:53+00:00

When anyone tells you voting doesn't matter, just remember that the top 1% votes at rates of over 90% and the elderly vote at rates of over 70%. People trying to keep you from voting are fighting to keep this kind of inequality in turnout that fuels our political system, whether they realize it or not.

It should be no surprise that we have a government full of old people acting out in the interests of the rich when the old and the rich are the ones turning out in elections and there's millions of dollars of right wing money going into dark social media campaigns designed to decrease turnout from the young and working class people

MatrioticMuckraker · 2022-07-04T17:20:11+00:00

What are you waiting for, then? Go eat the rich.

If you and your buddies haven't gunned down any fossil fuel execs yet, I'd bet my life you aren't about to do it even after Republicans take over and finish enacting Christian sharia law.

The fact is, you don't even know what that entails, and you want someone else to do it for you if it means getting out of your armchair. That's fine, though. It's called political representation, which you achieve by voting.

It "hasn't worked so far" in that it hasn't worked enough yet. If you work out and eat healthy for a year, then sit around and eat junk food for a year, and you end up the same as you started, it doesn't mean that working out and eating healthy "doesn't work". It means that progress takes time and consistency, and backsliding means you'll have to spend time just to get back to where you once were.

NighthawK1911 · 2022-07-02T16:18:50+00:00

HERE WE FUCKING GO AGAIN.

We've been over this.

It's just a dehumidifier.

The amount of energy used is so inefficient that it's actually more efficient to just make a desalination plant.

It produces so little water that it's unsustainable.

It's been debunked as a scam so many times.

Waterseer

Unboxed Stupidity

Self-filling water bottle

FREE water from AIR device

How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man?

WhatsAMisanthrope · 2022-07-01T13:49:08+00:00

I come from an agricultural area and actually have a small farm. I don't think I've ever heard one of my farming family use "city slickers"...

You can certainly have an opinion about an issue without working in the area yourself. I've got pretty strong opinions about genocide, human trafficking, global warming...
The role of corn prices as a trade tool is an interesting addition to the conversation, but it's still just one small part of the equation. The implications of industrial corn are absolutely massive. It contributes to the entire food industry in the US via cheap sugar, cheap meat, cheap dairy. But it has also industrialized the industry to an extent that a lot of people feel uncomfortable with, once they take a look. I highly recommend "An Omnivore's Dilemma" which goes into a lot of this, as well as the challenge that would be presented if people really did try to grow their own food. My conclusion is that industrial agriculture is necessary, but it doesn't have to look the way now.

2.b. Why did I take a side-track to talking about industrial agriculture? Because the meat industry (particularly beef) has had to adapt to corn as a feedstock, which is not natural for cattle. "Had to adapt" may sound a bit incorrect - they could feed cattle something else - but there's so much corn because of government price controls that it's the cheapest feedstock around, so those producers who didn't convert to using corn got wiped out.

The idea, below, that most of the corn is leftover after fermentation to fuel alcohol and is just pushed through the system as feed for animals is a misdirection. First of all, at the most of the mass of a corn kernel is starch (62% according to google) - this is what is used for ethanol production. So there's 62% off the top that is going into gas tanks rather than onto peoples' plates. I couldn't, in a reasonable period of time, find out what percentage of all fuel alcohol distillation waste ends up in animal feed. Definitely those who sell this byproduct tout its merits - those articles/ads are easy to find. And I definitely endorse the recycling of this "waste" into the food chain as long as it's of sufficient quality (i.e. safe to use for animals - relatively easy to ensure in some brewery operations for sure). Anyway, for lack of better numbers, let's say ALL of the waste, 38% makes it into livestock feed.

Still, that completely misses the point. The point is that we're in/on our way to a massive food shortage across the planet. Producing more cattle feed is not going to help the issue.

A lot of people argue "the corn that goes into fuel alcohol isn't good for eating." Well it's not good as corn on the cob, no. But it is perfectly good for eating as corn flour, etc. Further, the crop land devoted to wastefully producing industrial corn to feed our cars, cows, and cavities (looking for a better third word than "cavities" for alliterative purposes here... someone help me out... corn is the source of high fructose corn syrup though) could be used to produce soy, canola, wheat... any number of other cereals that could directly be used to fill in gaps in the global food supply.

Most farmers won't do that because they are absolutely masterful corn producers. Their entire operations are geared to production of monoculture corn. It doesn't seem to make sense to switch from corn to other crops for the sake of a single year blip.

But this entire system has been created by US agricultural policy. Those who believe in small government and government staying out of the free market should recognize that this is a system that is disconnected from the normal laws of supply and demand - the proof is that we can see a massive demand on the horizon yet those who control the supply are just going to carry on with business as usual.

edit: apparently when you go to "2b" it messes with numbering...

edit 2: thank you for the gold :)

neo101b · 2022-07-01T12:21:44+00:00

You beat me to it lol.

So ill have to go with :

You are being watched. The
government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour
of every day. I know because I built it. I designed the machine to
detect acts of terror but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving
ordinary people, people like you. Crimes the government considered
"irrelevant." They wouldn't act, so I decided I would. But I needed a
partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the
authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us, but victim or
perpetrator, if your number's up... we'll find *you*.

drtywater · 2022-06-30T22:14:02+00:00

For all the complaints about the Supreme Court the issue is how broken Congress has become. We need laws passed to address this stuff not rely on courts and executive branch action that can be changed with and administration change. Also people need to focus on state and local races more were change can also happen!!!!

WorldWideGlide · 2022-06-30T12:34:45+00:00

Let's look at the numbers behind a device like this.

The average person in america produces around 15 tons of CO2 anually.

Global CO2 per capita is an average of 4.5 tons.

Best case scenario is this offsets the CO2 from 36000/4.5 = 8000 people.

There are 8 billion people on the planet so you would need to build 1,000,000 of these devices to break even. This device was part-financed at 600 million (frank to USD is about 1:1). This is 600 trillion dollars. Of course the actual cost could drop if these were built in mass, but we're not off to a good start.

This device requires power to run, which must of course be from non-fossil fuel sources or it defeats the purpose. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that the energy required to convert CO2 back to carbon is equivalent to the energy it emits when burned from carbon for energy. This means that assuming 100% efficiency you would need an equivalent amount of power going into carbon capture devices as you are burning in the fossil feul industry. About 64% of the world energy comes from fossil fuels, so you'd need an additional 64% of the worlds power just for these devices. And that's just offsetting CO2 from power production.

So this begs the question, why not just use all of that renewable energy you'd use to power the carbon capture device to replace the fossil fuel sources?

The answer is politics.

The fossil feul companies love devices like these because they distract everyone while they continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere. And the companies making these get massive funding.

*EDIT: I'm not implying that carbon capture is useless and that we shouldn't pursue it as it may be very important in the future, it's just not something that will help us right now, the numbers just don't work. These resources need to be spent on clean renewable energy first and foremost. Fossil fuel companies are funding this stuff because it fools people into thinking that we can keep the lighter burning.*

UnpluggedUnfettered · 2022-06-30T16:17:40+00:00

Haha ok, but if you read the actual paper it's called:

Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a signature of enforcement bias in US cities

This is some A-tier media fact-twisting lmao, the new algorithm can identify patterns in law enforcement, not crime.

edit: For visibility; only 40% of violent crime is even reported to the police. There are as many biases behind who gets the police called on them as who the police arrest based on those calls. No matter how you slice it, the title of this piece is completely off the mark.

cheeruphumanity · 2022-06-30T14:50:48+00:00

It's such a shame nuclear lobbyists pretend "people are just scared".

Nuclear power production is way too expensive, too slow to build, leaves us with less jobs, socializes costs and privatizes profits. Yes, disasters can also happen but that's not the main reason for the opposition and the constant decline over the last decades.

clydeztoad · 2022-06-29T12:45:24+00:00

Roe vs Quaid?

3DigitIQ · 2022-06-28T13:47:07+00:00

I physiologically really don't do well at home. Feels like an invasion of work on my personal space and is really draining, I had a hard couple of years during the pandemic and am glad the office is available again.

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