I’ve been to Maui once and it blew my mind that there isn’t at least a light rail that goes from the popular beach areas to the airport. They are like 3 main roads they could follow in a loop. Tax the shit out of the tourists and get free light rail for residents. Tourists already spend $1000/week on cars/parking at resorts that just make life miserable for locals, just take that wasted money and build rail, powered by abundant sunshine/batteries. The status quo is so absurd.

That’s not the comparison at all, the comparison is what the sattelites are made of (mostly aluminum) and what the meteors are made of (mostly other stuff, like earth).

Are you just doing the thing where you cast doubt on journal articles because they feel wrong? You don’t think humans can affect the natural environment in such a way? This sounds oddly familiar and a bit ironic for this community…

Meteors aren’t made out of aluminum like satellites are btw. There will be more reasearch done and we will learn more. But for now, there’s a potential issue.

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-satellite-megaconstellations-jeopardize-recovery-ozone.amp

The reality is everything is at risk with a fascist anti-environmentalist leader, especially if they have a majority of Congress and the courts. I just don’t see how exercising additional restraint with respect to fuel economy standards, as if that creates opportunities for abuse down the road, helps anything here. The EPA is following the law, and should keep doing that. Your example with asbestos is just the EPA not regulating harder, so let’s applaud harder regulation.

As to the last 20 years, considering the makeup of Congress, I’d say the IRA was monumental.

This echoes generic fear mongering of regulation from the conservative side. The EPA operates according to specific rules, it’s not just out there making random policies. Legislation creates the mandate, they promulgate within the law. What does “but will it always” do good things even mean? What are some bad things the EPA has done in your mind? Saying the government shouldn’t have the power to regulate emissions that are destroying the biosphere is absurd. There’s no right to ICE vehicles in perpetuity enshrined in the constitution. If the EPA ever start doing truly asinine things, then we elect leaders to change the laws dictating their mandate. This is just basic democracy stuff.

What company assets are you even referring to? This is about seizing profits, you know like fines and taxes already do. I think you’d make a lot of friends seizing profits from these already subsidized companies that are doing great harm to the biosphere, but you do you.

I think you’re right in terms of the overall trends, but how we get there matters. Every single day matters, and the wrong policies could result in years of missed opportunities.

Great, we’re in agreement that self contained appliances can all use propane and isobutane then. That covers refrigerators, freezers, heat pump waters heaters (not split ones though, heat pump dryers, and a bunch of commercial refrigeration products like display cases at grocery stores. That was a good chunk of my comment.

What were seeing in e.g. Europe is monoblock heat pumps, where it’s also self contained and not split and they use e.g. a glycol mix as to transfer heat between inside/outside. This has pros and cons of course, but it solves the propane danger for a split system with a larger charge by keeping the propane outside. The con is freezing climates where there is risk of pipes bursting during power outages, but that’s manageable with failsafes. For true split systems, I agree that propane is problematic and CO2 is more promising. But we don’t have to use split systems everywhere either. I’m not aware of any reason we can’t add mercaptan to propane, unless it messes with the refrigerant characteristics. The low psi methane pipes can also easily make a bomb out of your house because the supply is unlimited, so I don’t see that as more dangerous than a fixed (low) charge in a sealed system.

We can solve these issues though, and my point is that the work involved is worth it to eliminate the dangers of synthetic refrigerants. I appreciate your perspective, thanks for the conversation!

Why don’t you actually prove that the dangers are significant before writing them off? Just because it’s flammable doesn’t mean it’s dangerous, so just saying flammable = “bad idea” isn’t a good enough argument. We have been using isobutane for years for refrigerators. And propane for years for refrigerated cases. They are already here. There are low charge limits in place already, and guess what - these appliances aren’t blowing up and killing people. There are monobloc propane heat pump systems all over Europe and Asia already. CO2 does require high pressures, but that can be engineered.

We already have literal methane being piped into multiple appliances in people’s homes, often unvented, we have people driving around with 20+ gallons of gasoline next to their children in SUVs, we have wiring in every wall of buildings that can all start fires, we have batteries in our pockets and cars and bikes, etc. We have UL and TUV and other groups certifying equipment for safety, let them do their jobs instead of writing off these critically important solutions. The status quo isn’t good enough and the chemical industry has a dog shit track record.

Love to see it. Unfortunately we’re still early in the phaseout of HFCs via Kigali, and the chemical companies are doing their best to inject HFOs (and resulting PFAS) as far and wide as possible. We all need to shift to natural refrigerants ASAP. If you’re buying a refrigerator, make sure it’s r600a, a heat pump, r290 or r744, etc. Say no to HFOs (and HFCs).

This seems like an attempt to shift the blame to another group you don’t identify with. We collectively did this. Humans have been clearing forests and altering ecosystems for millennia, and the only thing that really changed is industrialization and the ability to easily extract massive amounts of fossil fuels from the earth. Technology made that possible, and once the cat was out of the bag it became very difficult to put it back in. Sure capitalism sucks and all that, but humans, organized by country and loosely in competition with each other, were bound to fuck this all up regardless of whether the Soviet Union or the US or the British Empire or China was “in charge”. It’s a prisoners dilemma stacked on expectations of comfort. And sure a global authoritarian government exclusively focused on sustainability could pull this off, but people sure as shit wouldn’t like it, so here we are. Capitalism and it’s effects to undermine solutions in the name of profit are absolutely making it worse, but to place exclusive blame on capitalism seems naive and ignores human nature itself.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190829150702.htm#:~:text=Humans in these time periods,land clearance and selective breeding.

This article touches on the idea of an event, which aligns with your language around a transition. That seems appropriate to me, e.g. the industrial revolution would be the event that kicked off the next epoch. Considering the profound impact we’ve had on the planet since the industrial revolution, it seems like a reasonable place in time to assert that a new epoch has begun, however. It has clearly started to take shape. We have already done 1.5C of warming, with all signs pointing to much more to come. Biodiversity is already plummeting and will continue to drop. It’s perfectly reasonable to conclude that we’ve created a deviation from the Holocene normals and are simply calling this new thing something else, something undefined but clearly underway and likely to be as disruptive as any epoch change in the past. It’s an observation that we’ve fucked things up, but it’s not surprising that geologists aren’t ready to make the leap to a formal name, especially one randomly invented by a dude in an off the cuff comment and not through the scientific process.

Quite a shit opinion piece honestly. It’s a complex issue and the author’s argument of “but it’s 2024 come on” and then quoting the bible is lame.

The reality is solar is worth next to nothing in CA without storage, community solar is therefore worth next to nothing without storage, and the transmission level connections don’t offer the same advantage that individuals homeowners can achieve with batteries (actual backup), so utility scale comes out ahead on cost. The CPUC made their decision on cost, so unless the author has some actual data to back that up (they don’t, and they even sympathize with that argument), it’s all really just a feels piece. The Ward legislation was flawed in that it set constraints that could not be navigated through the cost modelling structures.

Other states that haven’t hit the belly of the duck will deal with this eventually and should thank early adopters like CA/TX for bringing down prices for battery storage for when they inevitably run into these issues. As a solar owner without battery in Colorado, I can guarantee you I’m taking more from the utility than I put in, which simply will fail at a certain scale and create inequities. You can argue that this is all fine and the carbon reduction is more important (and I generally agree), but there has to be a line somewhere where we need to agree on least cost solutions when all of the options get us to near net zero in the same timeframe.

This sub constantly shitting on everything that isn’t the “right way” has gotten really old. Can’t do individual action, better to focus on policies. Can’t change laws because lobbyists are more powerful, need to organize. And according to you, can’t organize because Karen, who didn’t give a shit to begin with, will think protesters are annoying. This specific effort is focused on Citibank and not general traffic disruption anyway. You’re more than welcome to organize your 2M people and try not to disrupt, I’ll support that too.

Although I agree with a lot of what you said, I can’t help but feel like you’ve used a few valid questions to undermine a broader point without offering any real substance behind it. For someone claiming to engage in a “pro science” manner, flat out calling someone “wrong” for the conclusions they drew from research doesn’t exactly meet the standard. You can’t just say anything from turk is biased and worthless, we know that it is biased but that can be corrected for and it’s far from worthless. You also seem to buying into this concept of fatigue without any real proof of the concepts effect on the extremely wide variety of both free/expensive, low/high cost behavior adjustments. Lastly, if you’re going to go this far in the weeds to undermine others’ points on what actions are worthwhile, we need more detail than just “organize”. Are you talking about participating in CCL? Talking to neighbors? Posting memes on Lemmy? Showing up at bike to work day? Hanging outside the courthouse with a sign? Like what does this actually look like to you and what aspects make this effective? Incremental progress is boring but it can absolutely work. Organized movements can absolutely fail, e.g. occupy wall street too. Let’s say your post really spoke to me and I’m inspired to organize - what do I do next? How can I support what you are organizing?

As an anecdote (I know it’s worthless), I become more engaged the more I lean in. I have talked to more neighbors about solar and heat pumps since I installed mine than ever before. It’s not taking away energy I was going to use to “organize” it’s taking energy I was going to spend talking about gutters or sports or what types of tomatoes I might plant this year with my neighbors. I fundamentally don’t understand how you expect someone that can’t be bothered to do any of the low hanging fruit items to effectively organize a movement to net zero. We need to build a culture of stewardship and sustainability that champions every reduction in CO2-eq because that’s the only metric that matters, and that starts at home and builds organically through actions and conversations, including those to our representatives, companies, and anyone else that might listen. I’m basically just advocating for doing all the things that you can while keeping your sanity.

Seems like you have defeatism covered on your own. If messaging didn’t matter advertising wouldn’t be a massive industry.

hypothetically producing roughly twice the amount of power currently providing juice to the nation’s schools, hospitals, gaming rigs and Taco Bells

What a painfully useless comparison. Does this include additional AC load when patrons get the meat sweats and diarrhea?

Here’s a real article on the issue: https://emp.lbl.gov/news/grid-connection-backlog-grows-30-2023-dominated-requests-solar-wind-and-energy-storage