George Hale
George Hale

George Hale

Welcome to my Social Blog

George Hale
George Hale
Welcome to my Social Blog
2y ago
Climatetech Combinations
George Hale

Many of the people concerned with climate change have their favored ways of dealing with the problem. Electrify transportation (and everything else). Switch to hydrogen and biofuels. Use renewables like wind and solar. Move toward transit-oriented development and plant-based diets. Capture carbon dioxide with plants, soil, and even machinery and lock it away. Focus less on mitigating climate change and more on making society more resilient in the face of floods, droughts, and sea level rise.

Each climate solution has value, but none of them solve everything and can even have problems of their own.

Solutions and problems

  • Electrifying everything

Switching to electric vehicles could help, but getting materials for batteries is hard, expensive, and dirty.

  • Hydrogen and biofuels

Making hydrogen and biofuels often requires fossil fuels and may use up valuable farm land.

  • Renewables

Solar panels and wind turbines take energy and materials to build and manufacturing can create pollution. Also, we'd need to manage inconsistent power output.

  • Carbon capture

Plants and soil can only soak up so much carbon dioxide and direct carbon capture requires energy and expensive equipment. Also, we have to lock captured carbon dioxide away somehow.

Combining solutions

Maybe each of these methods can address drawbacks in others. We could use excess energy from renewables to make hydrogen or power direct carbon capture. Transit could decrease how many cars we need to build. We could even use carbon dioxide to make biofuels.

It's crucial that people don't get so focused on their own solution that they don't see the potential downsides and how their technology interacts with other solutions.

There's likely no silver bullet for addressing climate change. We'll need to find new ways to live and make energy, reduce emissions, capture and lock away greenhouse gases, and deal with what lies ahead.

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Atomic Essay

George Hale
George Hale
Welcome to my Social Blog
2y ago
Technology to Save the World
George Hale

Persistent droughts, historic floods, and killer heat waves: climate change is a growing threat to humanity. But climatetech may help us overcome this threat.

But what exactly is climatetech?

Simply put, climatetech refers to a wide range of technologies to improve resilience or mitigate climate change and its effects. Climatetech covers a few major areas, though there can be overlap in many cases.

Energy

Climatetech in the energy realm covers electricity generation, distribution, and storage. This includes renewables like wind, solar, and wave power, batteries, smart grids, hydrogen, and biofuels.

Transportation

We'll still need to get from point A to point B. Transportation climatetech includes electric vehicles, transit, and supply chain transportation.

Infrastructure

Buildings, roads, and other infrastructure are another target for innovation. Better building materials and construction techniques and improved energy efficiency are a few topics of interest.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is a broad area that influences other climatetech realms. This includes recycling, reclamation, and circular industrial processes; new materials; and energy efficient manufacturing to name just a few areas.

Agriculture and water

No matter what, we still gotta eat. Climatetech work in this category covers crops that are healthier or resistant to hazards like drought. Reduced carbon dioxide and methane output from animal agriculture is another target for climatetech.

Better handling of water resources, including pollution remediation and stormwater management, are other climatetech targets.

Putting it all together

Climatetech innovations may provide ways to repair the climate, reduce our impact, and mitigate the effects of climate change.

It's not a silver bullet, but innovations and smart choices could help stave off disaster and maybe even help us live better lives.

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Atomic Essay