RoboGroMo

oh nice that sounds really cool, i'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

use of different types of solar where appropriate, we always see PV but solar thermal and bio-solar have some great uses - tanks of algae can be really good for various uses; nutrition for people and animals food and medicine ingredients such as carrageenan and agar, building materials from cellulose, biofules, bioplastic, wastewater treatment, fertilizer as well as potential future uses like being used in biodegradable electronics, as sensor materials (https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/50395) and for more advanced chemistry such as genetically engineered algae making cleaning solutions (great for cleaning solar panels), fuel for cutting tools, and of course alcohol and drug molecules (both medicinal and recreational)

Cody's Lab has some fascinating videos about his diy algae project, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64cEmjtwRgw might be useful as a visual reference, but basically they're tubes or tanks that sit in the sun or partial shade and grow algae.

people having a cookout on something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cooker or using a larger one to do things like fire ceramics (to maintain and regulate temperature over the duration you'd probably want something like molten salt feeding into a refractory chamber, by controlling the flow rate and mirror focus you could get very good temperature balance) there was a great video with a guy i think in the Nevada desert who had an array which he was using to melt metal and sand casting, this would be a great way to recycle heavy infrastructure from todays society - maybe a scrapyard with mirror arrays used to recycle old cars into useful new tools, the mirrors don't need to be perfectly reflective so could simply be sheets of metal made from the scrap and polished with a windmill powered grinding plate -- the only difficult thing is getting them all to line up, this could be complex tracking gears, digital sensor and motor based systems or a slightly cleverer solution using passive solar tracking where a windowed section of the mirror surface is linked to hydrolytic containers and thermal expansion causes it to realign when one side goes dark - i've seen diy people make them that work pretty well but they're still far from perfect even the expensive industrial ones

i can't remember the details because i'm poor but they manage other peoples money so a lot of people who care about the environment have money in a 401k or something which means blackrock control the shares they own and vote in shareholder meetings for whatever's best for rich people - there's a way to be more proactive by registering your ownership yourself but i have no idea what it involves.

it's not entirely irrational though, if you're convinced you're in a frying pan and doom is imminent then it can feel like your only option is to jump out into the fire - and maybe it will work out better, maybe we'd land on a recently added log and spring to safety... personally i'm more about doing some parcour out the pan and along and the wooden handle or jumping onto the hand holding the spatula and burning through the flesh of the beast that got us into this dire situation.

By that i of course mean developing a powerful open-source movement and an educated community which is able to transition to better ways of living without hurting anyone, it's harder and far more complex but something we absolutely must strive for.

i could say the same thing about regulation, you really think if we can't even restrict guns you'll magic up the political will to ban something that would actually affect their daily life and earns so many companies so much money? coke pulls in 25b a year, they can afford all the lobbyists.

We need as many people as possible to have already moved away from them before we have the slightest chance at legislation.

what would happen if everyone turned around and said 'you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i'm never going to be without my refillable bottle' how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?

But if James Quincey said 'fuck it, I'm not producing plastic bottles anymore they're bad for the planet' but 8 billion people said 'oh ok, well we're still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles' the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.

ok play it through a bit, so we shut down those 7 companies - i'm not sure which seven companies people are talking about but i assume it's related to this statistic Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions so let's just shut them all down...

mother nature breaths a sigh of relief as billions of people die because of the collapse of global infrastructure, world governments collapse, desperate conflicts erupt around the world with warlords taking over oil reserves and production facilities... the handful of dictators with working tanks and who only care about wealth and power subjugate the helpless and starving masses promising food and prosperity when victory comes...

Now the planet has been purged of everyone who actually cares about the climate, every available source of food and energy is stripped in a frantic battle for survival - how many people do you know that would let their kids freeze to death and how many people do you know that'd go out and chop down a tree to burn? A couple of months of winter and every tree in every city would be felled.

also we need communities already experimenting with living like that or it'll be a mess, for example I've never eaten meat in my life and as a kid people couldn't even begin to grasp that it was possible - i'd constantly get asked 'what do you eat then?!' but I haven't heard that question in years, closest to it is likely to be 'what do you have at Christmas' then when i say nut roast they no long say 'whats that?' they say 'oh i had a great nut roast once...'

As a kid family holidays used to involve stopping at the only cafe that had something without meat on the menu, now even McDonalds has a wide vegan selection (in the uk). If someone had come out in the 80s and ended the meet subsidies then it would fail instantly, if it happened now there would certainly be a large backlash but the majority of people would be able to shift their consumption patterns without many problems - the policy might have a fighting chance. Even the meat-and-two guys that i know regularly have meet free dinners, it's really common to only eat meat once or twice a week.

Of course if i was made dictator for life i'd bring in sweeping changes that ban all the evil practices which make the meat industry possible, but that's not going to happen - what is going to happen is it's going to continue to get easier and cheaper to eat plant based diets, we're going to see endless headlines like 'largest dairy producer announces closure amid increasing popularity of oat milk', it'll shift from the beef industry having a hugely powerful lobby backed by billions of dollars to the beef lobby being Joe Rogan and Liverking yelling at clouds about how they need to consume flesh to feel manly. When someone suggests banning an awful and disgusting practice within the meat industry the general consensus will be 'yeah i can go without that if it's damaging to the environment and cruel to the animals' so policy change will actually be possible.

Just shrugging and saying 'it's not going to happen overnight so i'll just keep eating meat until it does' is absolutely mindless, the bath is never going to fill if the tap isn't turned on - eating without meat helps fund and sustain the systems which makes it possible, it helps make it easier for other people to also eat without meat -- even if it's only dropping meat where it's convenient it's helping take power from the meat industry, by making a conscious choice to avoid meat you're joining an increasing number of people who do the same which represents a sizeable portion of the market - the more that gets catered to the large it grows.

Yes it's true that no one person is going to change things but when we start to move in the right direction it makes it easier for others to move that way also. This is the same with reusable bottles, using public transport, refilling containers at the store instead of single use plastics...

said 8 billion people in unison

well going by how brutal that video of the plain falling from the sky is I'd guess Putin wanted to send a message to people who go against him - it could be paranoia but more likely he's aware of people actually plotting against him - we could well see a purge of other anti-putin characters which is historically a very key moment because it's basically like calling in poker - he's forcing them to act and if their hand is stronger then he's done for, if it's not then a handful of potential threats are removed but also more are created in the fear and resentment that comes from it.

The key thing is how Wagner and their supporters react to this, it might scare some people into silence but it's not going to win Putin any friends.

going to be interesting how all the Wagner troops and supporters respond to this, it would be kinda ironic if it wasn't actually Putin but no one would ever believe that and the backlash ends up unseating him.

a lot of infrastructure developments are nearing completion too which makes it easier to integrate new renewable projects, hopefully we'll see an increase in tied usage for industries which can best make use of power at peek times as a way of stabilising the grid - when it's windy they make hydrogen or extract carbon from the air using the excess energy then turn off when power generation levels fall, the more this replaces traditional constant use systems the easier it and more productive it is to add renewables to the grid especially at scale.

A similar thing is likely to emerge with electric cars, e-bikes, and other battery devices, smart meter tariffs which allow people to set it to only charge when the grid has power to spare and prices are lower - if they're paired with home solar and localised generation then it could really help take the pressure off long distance transmission lines.