The world’s most powerful wind turbine has just been installed off of the coast of Aberdeen.
One full rotation of the V164-8.8 can power the average home in Scotland for a full day. That is an incredible step for the company Vattenfall and for Scottish renewables.
it’s really fucking interesting that accusations of inaccessibility never seem to be levied against The Hard Sciences
if someone asks me what i’m doing in lab and i explain a little bit of maxwell’s vortex hypothesis, nobody expects to understand the whole thing. you have to have some foundational knowledge of calculus and electromagnetism, and you need to study faraday’s experimental data; without those, i can give you a summary of maxwell but i can’t possibly make you understand the whole thing. that’s not a failing on my part, your part, or maxwell’s. it’s just how it goes when someone produces a paper in a specialized field, and people generally accept that.
if someone asks me what i’m writing my annual essay on and i say it’s about spinoza’s conception of god as explicated through nature, suddenly i’ll get people who expect that either the entire thing needs to be stated in fifth-grade vocab terms, in which case they’ll shit on the entire field of philosophy for being easy, or i’m being inaccessible and elitist, in which case they’ll shit on the entire field of philosophy for being pretentious and esoteric. it’s striking, actually, the extent to which people have different expectations of subjects i’m in fact studying simultaneously in an interdisciplinary program.
there are plenty of academics who overuse jargon, whose writing is genuinely unintelligible and needlessly convoluted, and who i would like to punch in the face. but the solution to that problem is not to make blanket statements about how knowledge must always be accessible to people outside the field. and even when people do make those statements they never mean them. what they mean is that they think humanities are essentially lower and dumber than hard sciences and that the way students discuss them should reflect that.
I’d argue that the hard sciences should be made more accessible though. Maybe not all of them, but sciences that have policy applications absolutely.
That’s not to say that the double standard isn’t unfair to people
studying the humanities either because I agree that being told to dumb
down your work by everyone is disrespectful, just that the world loses
out on the flip side of that as well.
Most people don’t understand climate change because scientific discussion of it is confined to inaccessible academic journals. Meanwhile media companies don’t have environmental reporters anymore so, if it gets talked about in mainstream media at all, it’s going to be by people who don’t usually report on it. Scientists aren’t taught how to communicate with the public (and many see it as beneath them anyway) so they have trouble being as effective at it as PR charlatans for fossil fuel interests, and if a badly written article about climate change comes out, they’re the ones who can spin it to their advantage easier.
Rinse and repeat for pretty much any other complicated topic that attracts anti-science conspiracy theories to it like vaccines or chemtrails. The public doesn’t get the whole truth because most of the academic discussion is inaccessible and what gets disseminated out to the public is “both sides” type reporting by journalists who don’t normally cover science.
This would be made better if scientific writing was required for science majors but it usually isn’t.
As many as 153 million premature deaths linked to air pollution could be avoided worldwide this century if governments speed up their timetable for reducing fossil fuel emissions, a new Duke University-led study finds.
The study is the first to project the number of lives that could be saved, city by city, in 154 of the world’s largest urban areas if nations agree to reduce carbon emissions and limit global temperature rise to 1.5oC in the near future rather than postponing the biggest emissions cuts until later, as some governments have proposed.
Premature deaths would drop in cities on every inhabited continent, the study shows, with the greatest gains in saved lives occurring in Asia and Africa.
This has a lot to do because the molecule contains two double bonds (which are harder to break than single bonds), so a lot of energy is required (and therefore a high cost as well). It turns out the energy to break it down would produce more CO2 than would be saved by breaking it apart using conventional methods.
You theoretically could break down CO2 and remove it from processes so it doesn’t get released into the atmosphere, but you would have to use a carbon free energy source to do this.
There are lots of scientists working on more efficient ways to do this, because if a low energy/low carbon method is developed to break down CO2, it would make a big impact on reducing CO2 emissions.
Doesn’t algae breathe carbon dioxide sequestering the carbon from the oxygen though? Isn’t algae more useful than gasses wasted in the atmosphere?
Yes there is some research around growing algae using CO2.
With such a focus on the possibilities that microalgae can offer, various industrial methods have been developed for its production. However, most are currently not economically viable, especially on a large scale. Limitations to these systems include: sub-optimal productivity, expensive installation, large footprint (surface area), high water demand and the requirement for a highly trained end-user. The EU-funded ALDADISK project has been set up to meet these challenges by creating a scalable production unit, capable of delivering high value alga-based products and biomass while reducing CO2 emissions.
But there are some pilot projects taking off using this concept, such as this one in Sweden:
I’m hopefully that some efficient process to sequester CO2 is developed in the near future. I think we’ll need it, with the rate that countries are currently reducing emissions (not fast enough).
The thing is climate change is going to happen. We are already in to deep. A central part of organization now has to be preparing for its effects. Climate refugees will be rampant. Gentrification from coastal cities will be everywhere. Famines and droughts will be common. Hurricanes will be worse. We have to prepare disaster relief asap. Fascists and racists thrive in times of crisis. Our communities have to be strong and ready
Will a vegetarian diet make all that much of a difference on the environment? How about recycling? According to a recent study
published by a pair of scientists, there is a way to rank which actions
reduce greenhouse gas emissions the most. And in lieu of the Paris
Agreement, the everyday citizen may want to get acquainted. Read more (7/12/17)
reducing your carbon footprint =/= fighting climate change. some of the biggest things you can do are campaigning, taking part in environmental activism, talking to your local politicians, voting with environmental policy in mind and spreading awareness about all these actions. (i’m not suggesting these as an alternative to the methods in the article, but as a complement. we can’t think about environmental action in individual terms only).
A huge brewery is being built in the nearby city of Mexicali, and Gallegos – like many others – fears it will suck up what little water remains to make beer for export to the US.”
[…]
Gallegos and other farmers see themselves as the victims of an unhealthy deal between the state government of Baja California and Constellation Brands, the third biggest brewer in the US.
They’re managing the water as if it were loot to be divvied up among them,” he said. “The government’s intention is to leave us with nothing, without land and without water.”
[…]
If this brewery was such a good deal wouldn’t it be [across the border] in Calexico or Las Vegas?” asked farmer Eduardo Cisneros, 75. “They just want cheap water and cheap labour.
Mexicali Resists, the local movement of farmers and residents, have been fighting this decision since it was announced. They have held demonstrations outside government offices and set up protest camps at the construction sites of these water pipes. They are asking to join them in a boycott of Constellation Brands. This includes the following beer, wine, spirit, and sparkling brands:
Alice White, Anderra, Arbor Mist, Ballast Point, Black Box Wines, Black Velvet, Blackstone, Blindfold, Blufeld, Cadet d’Oc, Casa Noble Tequila, Charles Smith Wines, Clos du Bois, Cook’s, Corona brands, Cuttings, Diseno, Drylands, Estancia, Franciscan Estate, Funky Buddha Brewery, High West, Kim Crawford, Manischewitz, Mark West, Meiomi, Milestone, Modelo brands, Monkey Bay, Mount Veeder Winery, Mouton Cadet, Night Harvest, Nobilo, Pacifico, Paso Creek, Paul Masson Brandy, PopCrush, Primal Roots, Ravage, Ravens Wood, Red Guitar, Rex-Goliath, Robert Mondavi brands, Roget, Rosatello, Ruffino, Saldo, Saved, Selaks, Serpent’s Bite, Simi, Simply Naked, Svedka Vodka brands, Taylor, The Dreaming Tree, The Hogue Cellars, The Prisoner, Thorn, Thorny Rose, Toasted Head, Tocayo Brewing Company, Tom Gore Vineyards, Urlo (scream), VNO, Vendange, Victoria, Wild Horse Winery & Vineyards, Wild Irish Rose, and Woodbridge.
“We’re already having water shortages. Now imagine when the plant starts working.”- Mexicali Resists protester, Ana López. “
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