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Cake day: March 5th, 2024

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  • We have to do both. If today our emissions went to zero we would still see more warming because of all that CO2 we’ve already released. First priority is to get to net zero so we can stop making the problem worse, then we have to remove all the CO2 we released. We have the technology now to do step one it’s just a matter of scaling it up. While we work on step one we need to do the research on the best way to do step two so when we get to that point we have something ready to go. Pulling CO2 out of the air is going to be inefficient no matter what just from the physics of the problem but it still needs to be done and the energy to do so has to come from renewables.


  • chaosmarine92@reddthat.comtoNature Enthusiasts@lemmy.worldNature is wonderful
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    3 months ago

    Doing some back of the envelope calculations we have put about 1.6 trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. Latest estimates put the number of trees on earth at around 3 trillion. Looking at how much CO2 a tree takes up puts the average around 600lbs over the first twenty years. So combing all this if we want to plant enough trees to take up all the excess CO2 we would need about 5.3 trillion more trees, or almost double the total number of trees on the planet.

    This is simply not achievable in a fast enough time span to make a difference. Nevermind that I was being super optimistic with all my calculations and the real number needed is likely much higher still.

    It is simply a necessity to develop better methods to pull CO2 directly from the air and to do it on the same scale that we have been releasing CO2.


  • In addition to what has been said already, in many places the cost to upgrade the electrical service to the building to handle the amount of power that could be generated can be as much or more than all the other costs combined. So now the building operators are looking at millions in cost with a potentially 30 year payback period. It just doesn’t make sense at that point.




  • Given the egotistical nature of the Goauld I wouldn’t put it past them to have a sort of “gentleman’s agreement” to keep war mostly ground based to help limit the ability of the jaffa to rebel. We never see any Goauld weaponry that can track its target for instance. Everything just shoots in a straight line until it hits something. They want “war” to be up close and messy to help control their subjects. Given that, air defense as we understand it would defeat the purpose of fighting in the first place for them.


  • The idea of the Dyson sphere, or actually Dyson swarm as it was originally proposed, assumes that there is no weird new physics that makes energy for free. If you have truly free energy then all bets are off for what you can do with it. If there are no new thermodynamics breaking discoveries then even with cheap fusion reactors making a Dyson swarm is the best long term way to get huge amounts of energy. With decent automation only a little better than we have now and a few centuries of time you could disassemble Mercury into space habitats with room for easily quadrillions of people. So without magic free energy why not do that?