geteilt von: https://aussie.zone/post/19997535

Many respondents said their views could shift if they saw real, meaningful action – especially from governments and big business. Some wanted proof that Australia is taking climate change seriously. Others said action would offer hope or reduce their anxiety.

Even some sceptical respondents said coordinated, global action might persuade them

This part of the research is actually quite interesting. Its the bandwagon effect, people concluding, "everyones heading that way, must be for a reason."

Its all the more reason to keep the pressure against the propaganda from the likes of Koch, Rhinehart or Palmer, et al.

You never know, the mass of action from others could convince these people, with their deep vested interests, of their own folly.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/55629706

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4897192

archive.today link

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/15360304

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20232082

By Brett Wilkins

September 12, 2024

Scientist Erica Chenoweth, who studies civil resistance at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge in the U.S., showed that every movement that mobilized at least 3.5% of a population was successful. This led to what’s known as the 3.5% rule — that protests require this level of participation to ensure change.

But the figure can be misleading, Chenoweth cautions. A much larger number of people are probably supporting a successful revolution even if they aren’t visibly protesting.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14705005

Conservation actions are effective at reducing global biodiversity loss, according to a major study.

International researchers spent 10 years looking at measures, from hatching Chinook salmon to eradication of invasive algae.

The authors said their findings offered a "ray of light" for those working to protect threatened animals and plants.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8027175

'Reef stars' restored Indonesia's blast-damaged corals in just 4 years

• https://piped.video/watch?v=EBN9JeX3iDs
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBN9JeX3iDs

Video Description:

Direct Air Capture (DAC) has been getting more and more attention over the last few years. Could we avert climate change by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere? Could we not just stop, but actually reverse the damage done? Unfortunately, most don't fully appreciate just quite how much CO2 we've emitted and the outrageous scale of the problem facing us. Today, we apply the fundamental principles of thermodynamics to question whether this is even feasible.

Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping. Edited by Jorge Casas. Fact checking by Alexandra Masegian.

Channel Description:

Space, astronomy, exoplanets, astroengineering and the search for extraterrestrial life & intelligence.

The Cool Worlds Lab, based at the Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, is a team of astronomers seeking to discover and understand alien worlds, particularly those where temperatures are cool enough for life, led by Professor David Kipping.

CHAPTERS (and key bits)

• 0:00 Climate Change: Some CC is needed just to maintain a level.
• 2:44 Removal Requirements: We released 37 Gt of CO~2~ in 2022.
• 3:38 Possible Solutions: Trees are good for 4 years, then no space.
• 5:03 Introducing DAC: IPCC estimates 20 Gt/yr @ 2050 required.
• 5:43 Climate Anxiety: This video is sponsored by betterhelp.
• 7:12 DAC Principles: Currently 19 DAC plants remove 10'000 tCO~2~/yr, or 0.000003% of global emissions.
• 8:14 Scalability: Why this video focuses on physics, not economics
• 9:29 Thermodynamics: Why DAC is a fight against entropy, introducing Gibbs. Lower limit: 120 kWh/tCO~2~
• 12:08 Progressive DAC: Starting in 2025, remove how much and how fast?
• 13:32 RCPs: Why 2.6 is discarded, why 4.5 is chosen (with an outlook on 8.5)
• 15:09 Simulations: For 450 ppm, we need to scrub 20 GtCO~2~ in 2050. For 350, almost 80 Gt.
• 17:03 Energy Requirements: 450 ppm requires 5% of global electricity. 350: 15%.
• 19:34 Efficiency: Above numbers assumed 100% efficiency. Current estimate 5%, measured 8%.
• 21:21 Conclusions: It's tough to do, but just possible. Easiest way: Stop emitting.
• 24:35 Outro and credits

As carbon dioxide continues to build up in the Earth’s atmosphere, research teams around the world have spent years seeking ways to remove the gas efficiently from the air. Meanwhile, the world’s number one “sink” for carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is the ocean, which soaks up some 30 to 40 percent of all of the gas produced by human activities.

Recently, the possibility of removing carbon dioxide directly from ocean water has emerged as another promising possibility for mitigating CO2 emissions, one that could potentially someday even lead to overall net negative emissions. But, like air capture systems, the idea has not yet led to any widespread use, though there are a few companies attempting to enter this area.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT says they may have found the key to a truly efficient and inexpensive removal mechanism. The findings were reported this week in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, in a paper by MIT professors T. Alan Hatton and Kripa Varanasi, postdoc Seoni Kim, and graduate students Michael Nitzsche, Simon Rufer, and Jack Lake.

The existing methods for removing carbon dioxide from seawater apply a voltage across a stack of membranes to acidify a feed stream by water splitting. This converts bicarbonates in the water to molecules of CO2, which can then be removed under vacuum. Hatton, who is the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering, notes that the membranes are expensive, and chemicals are required to drive the overall electrode reactions at either end of the stack, adding further to the expense and complexity of the processes. “We wanted to avoid the need for introducing chemicals to the anode and cathode half cells and to avoid the use of membranes if at all possible,” he says.

The team came up with a reversible process consisting of membrane-free electrochemical cells. Reactive electrodes are used to release protons to the seawater fed to the cells, driving the release of the dissolved carbon dioxide from the water. The process is cyclic: It first acidifies the water to convert dissolved inorganic bicarbonates to molecular carbon dioxide, which is collected as a gas under vacuum. Then, the water is fed to a second set of cells with a reversed voltage, to recover the protons and turn the acidic water back to alkaline before releasing it back to the sea. Periodically, the roles of the two cells are reversed once one set of electrodes is depleted of protons (during acidification) and the other has been regenerated during alkalization.

This removal of carbon dioxide and reinjection of alkaline water could slowly start to reverse, at least locally, the acidification of the oceans that has been caused by carbon dioxide buildup, which in turn has threatened coral reefs and shellfish, says Varanasi, a professor of mechanical engineering. The reinjection of alkaline water could be done through dispersed outlets or far offshore to avoid a local spike of alkalinity that could disrupt ecosystems, they say.

“We’re not going to be able to treat the entire planet’s emissions,” Varanasi says. But the reinjection might be done in some cases in places such as fish farms, which tend to acidify the water, so this could be a way of helping to counter that effect.

Once the carbon dioxide is removed from the water, it still needs to be disposed of, as with other carbon removal processes. For example, it can be buried in deep geologic formations under the sea floor, or it can be chemically converted into a compound like ethanol, which can be used as a transportation fuel, or into other specialty chemicals. “You can certainly consider using the captured CO2 as a feedstock for chemicals or materials production, but you’re not going to be able to use all of it as a feedstock,” says Hatton. “You’ll run out of markets for all the products you produce, so no matter what, a significant amount of the captured CO2 will need to be buried underground.”

Initially at least, the idea would be to couple such systems with existing or planned infrastructure that already processes seawater, such as desalination plants. “This system is scalable so that we could integrate it potentially into existing processes that are already processing ocean water or in contact with ocean water,” Varanasi says. There, the carbon dioxide removal could be a simple add-on to existing processes, which already return vast amounts of water to the sea, and it would not require consumables like chemical additives or membranes.

“With desalination plants, you’re already pumping all the water, so why not co-locate there?” Varanasi says. “A bunch of capital costs associated with the way you move the water, and the permitting, all that could already be taken care of.”

The system could also be implemented by ships that would process water as they travel, in order to help mitigate the significant contribution of ship traffic to overall emissions. There are already international mandates to lower shipping’s emissions, and “this could help shipping companies offset some of their emissions, and turn ships into ocean scrubbers,” Varanasi says.

The system could also be implemented at locations such as offshore drilling platforms, or at aquaculture farms. Eventually, it could lead to a deployment of free-standing carbon removal plants distributed globally.

The process could be more efficient than air-capture systems, Hatton says, because the concentration of carbon dioxide in seawater is more than 100 times greater than it is in air. In direct air-capture systems it is first necessary to capture and concentrate the gas before recovering it. “The oceans are large carbon sinks, however, so the capture step has already kind of been done for you,” he says. “There’s no capture step, only release.” That means the volumes of material that need to be handled are much smaller, potentially simplifying the whole process and reducing the footprint requirements.

The research is continuing, with one goal being to find an alternative to the present step that requires a vacuum to remove the separated carbon dioxide from the water. Another need is to identify operating strategies to prevent precipitation of minerals that can foul the electrodes in the alkalinization cell, an inherent issue that reduces the overall efficiency in all reported approaches. Hatton notes that significant progress has been made on these issues, but that it is still too early to report on them. The team expects that the system could be ready for a practical demonstration project within about two years.

“The carbon dioxide problem is the defining problem of our life, of our existence,” Varanasi says. “So clearly, we need all the help we can get.”

The work was supported by ARPA-E.

🤔 I legitimately do wonder why stuff like this and support for nuclear energy in general hasn't skyrocketed on account of climate change. It's the one large-scale means that we have to achieve clean energy with current technology, yet I see no governments pushing to replace coal plants with nuclear ones. You'd think the companies who own the coal plants would just accept the writing on the wall and switch to nuclear, if only to save themselves.

There's so much about humanity's tepid response to climate change in general that does not make sense to me, but the fact remains that nuclear is an important tool we have in our toolbox and we desperately need to start using it to prevent the real tragedy of runaway climate collapse.

What do you guys think? Do you think these small modular reactors will take off or nah?

Researchers have found that one method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is available, affordable, and capable of being implemented right now. Nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance, could be readily abated with existing technology applied to industrial sources.

"The urgency of climate change requires that all greenhouse gas emissions be abated as quickly as is technologically and economically feasible," said lead author Eric Davidson, a professor with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "Limiting nitrous oxide in an agricultural context is complicated, but mitigating it in industry is affordable and available right now. Here is a low-hanging fruit that we can pluck quickly."

When greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, they trap the heat from the sun, leading to a warming planet. In terms of emissions, nitrous oxide is third among greenhouse gases, topped only by carbon dioxide and methane. Also known as laughing gas, it has a global warming potential nearly 300 times that of carbon dioxide and stays in the atmosphere for more than 100 years. It also destroys the protective ozone layer in the stratosphere, so reducing nitrous oxide emissions provides a double benefit for the environment and humanity.

Nitrous oxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased at an accelerating rate in recent decades, mostly from increasing agricultural emissions, which contribute about two-thirds of the global human-caused nitrous oxide. However, agricultural sources are challenging to reduce. In contrast, for the industry and energy sectors, low-cost technologies already exist to reduce nitrous oxide emissions to nearly zero.

Industrial nitrous oxide emissions from the chemical industry are primarily by-products from the production of adipic acid (used in the production of nylon) and nitric acid (used to make nitrogen fertilizers, adipic acid, and explosives). Emissions also come from fossil fuel combustion used in manufacturing and internal combustion engines used in cars and trucks.

"We know that abatement is feasible and affordable. The European Union's emissions trading system made it financially attractive to companies to remove nitrous oxide emissions in all adipic acid and nitric acid plants," said co-author Wilfried Winiwarter of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. "The German government is also helping to fund abatement of nitrous oxide emissions from nitric acid plants in several low-income and middle-income countries."

The private sector could also play a key role in nitrous oxide emissions reduction, encouraged by trends in consumer preferences for purchasing climate-friendly products. For example, 65% of the nitrous emissions embodied in nylon products globally are used in passenger cars and light vehicles. Automobile manufacturers could require supply chains to source nylon exclusively from plants that deploy efficient nitrous oxide abatement technology.

A space solar power prototype has demonstrated its ability to wirelessly beam power through space and direct a detectable amount of energy toward Earth for the first time. The experiment proves the viability of tapping into a near-limitless supply of power in the form of energy from the sun from space.

Because solar energy in space isn’t subject to factors like day and night, obscuration by clouds, or weather on Earth, it is always available. In fact, it is estimated that space-based harvesters could potentially yield eight times more power than solar panels at any location on the surface of the globe.

The wireless power transfer was achieved by the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE), an array of flexible and lightweight microwave power transmitters, which is one of the three instruments carried by the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1).

SSPD-1 was launched in January 2023 as part of the California Institute of Technology's (Caltech) Space Solar Power Project (SSPP), the primary goal of which is to harvest solar power in space and then transmit it to the surface of Earth.

"Through the experiments we have run so far, we received confirmation that MAPLE can transmit power successfully to receivers in space," Co-Director of the Space-Based Solar Power Project, Dr. Ali Hajimiri, said in a statement. "We have also been able to program the array to direct its energy toward Earth, which we detected here at Caltech. We had, of course, tested it on Earth, but now we know that it can survive the trip to space and operate there."

MAPLE demonstrated the transmission of energy wirelessly through space by sending energy from a transmitter to two separate receiver arrays around a foot away, where it was transformed into electricity. This was used to light up a pair of LEDs.

The instrument then beamed energy from a tiny window installed in the unit to the roof of Gordon and Betty Moore Laboratory of Engineering on Caltech’s campus in Pasadena.

Because MAPLE is not sealed, the experiment also demonstrated its capability to function in the harsh environment of space while subject to large swings in temperature and exposure to solar radiation. The conditions experienced by this prototype will soon be felt by large-scale SSPP units.

“To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever demonstrated wireless energy transfer in space, even with expensive rigid structures,” Hajimiri added. “We are doing it with flexible, lightweight structures and with our own integrated circuits. This is a first!”

In a video from Caltech, Hajimiri, who led the Caltech that developed MAPLE, explained how the wireless transmission of energy through space is based on a quantum phenomenon called “interference.”

Interference arises due to the wave-like nature of light. When two light waves overlap, if they are in phase, the waves align, and the peaks of the waves meet and create a greater peak with a height that is the sum of the two original peaks. This is called constructive interference.

If, however, the waves of light are out of phase and overlap while misaligned, a peak may meet a trough in the wave, and both are canceled out, a process known as destructive interference.

"If you have multiple sources that are operating in concert, in the same phase, you can actually direct energy in one direction so all of them will only add in one direction and will cancel each other out in all other directions," Hajimiri said. "The same way that a magnifying glass can focus light into a small point, you can actually control the timing of this in such a way that you can focus all of that energy in a smaller area than the area that you started with." Related stories

By precisely controlling the timing of this process, the direction of the energy can be adjusted very rapidly on a scale of nanoseconds, and power can be redirected to space-based receivers or even receivers here on Earth. Together this allows the energy to be directed to the desired location and nowhere else, and all this can be done without the need for any moving mechanical parts.

Hajimiri and his team are now assessing the performance of the individual units that comprise MAPLE. a painstaking process that will take as long as six months to complete. This will allow them to provide feedback that will guide the development of fully realized versions of the system in the future.

It is planned that SSPP will eventually consist of a constellation of modular spacecraft collecting sunlight, transforming it into electricity, and turning this into microwaves that are then beamed over vast distances, including back to Earth, where energy is needed. This could include regions of the globe currently poorly served by existing energy infrastructure.

"In the same way that the internet democratized access to information, we hope that wireless energy transfer democratizes access to energy," Hajimiri concluded. "No energy transmission infrastructure will be needed on the ground to receive this power. That means we can send energy to remote regions and areas devastated by war or natural disaster."

Something like this would be really, really great in terms of providing 24/7 solar power without the baggage of battery storage, especially if fusion never pans out. Stuff like this should be up there with nuclear when it comes to this kind of talk, but I don't know if the rest of the world has put 2 and 2 together on it yet.