hydroptic

It's great that this article linked to the original journal article. Nice that it's open access, too! So good to see that it's becoming more common. The academic publishing business is just so… well, in a word, fucked.

Hardware is a low-budget scifi horror movie that was the directorial debut of Richard Stanley – who is notable for being the initial director in the notorious Island of Dr. Moreau filmatization in the 90's – and starring Dylan McDermott and Stacey Travis.

I wouldn't call it a good movie, exactly, but it's not terrible either and it definitely has its moments. Stanley's style is pleasantly weird, and the aesthetics are sometimes really on point.

Here's the rest of my screenshots (sorry about the stupid rounded corners on all of them, my video player insists on including those in screenshots):

Author: https://www.instagram.com/lucasturnbloom, https://www.patreon.com/HowToCat

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/11636550

Opinion piece by Sierra Solter, "a plasma physicist, engineer, and inventor who studies the intersection of heliophysics and aerospace". Relevant quote:

Upon investigating just how much dust in the form of satellite and rocket debris the space industry has dumped into the ionosphere during re-entry, I was alarmed to find that it is currently multiple Eiffel Tower’s worth of metallic ash. I wouldn’t have even been able to calculate that at all without a scientist’s personally run website. Our ozone is mere pennies thick, and soon we will be putting at least an Eiffel Tower’s worth of metallic ash a year directly into the ionosphere. And all of that will stay there, indefinitely.

How could we possibly think that burning trash in our atmosphere 24/7 is going to be fine?

Opinion piece by Sierra Solter, "a plasma physicist, engineer, and inventor who studies the intersection of heliophysics and aerospace". Relevant quote:

Upon investigating just how much dust in the form of satellite and rocket debris the space industry has dumped into the ionosphere during re-entry, I was alarmed to find that it is currently multiple Eiffel Tower’s worth of metallic ash. I wouldn’t have even been able to calculate that at all without a scientist’s personally run website. Our ozone is mere pennies thick, and soon we will be putting at least an Eiffel Tower’s worth of metallic ash a year directly into the ionosphere. And all of that will stay there, indefinitely.

How could we possibly think that burning trash in our atmosphere 24/7 is going to be fine?

The main message here is that it looks increasingly certain that we will run out of resources sooner than the coming deterioration of the climate could put an end to our lifestyle. (And that’s quite a feat, knowing how a growing Earth energy imbalance has accelerated warming recently…) The model also assigns a not so distant timeframe when the whole economic model we thought to be relevant for centuries to come might go badly wrong.

As to the reason why this might indeed be the case, and as an independent corroboration to the study above, I suggest to take a look on the state of the petroleum industry. Why? Well, energy is still the economy, as the basket case of Germany can testify, and despite all the handwaving oil is still the master resource, making all other energy and mineral resources available. Mining, agriculture, construction, long distance transport, plastics, all hopelessly depend on petroleum. Hydro, nuclear and “renewables” are also made possible by using diesel and gasoline burning vehicles to bring people, raw materials and equipment on site. Should the availability of oil decline, it would eventually bring all other resources and energy production down with it.