8 ms·

Am I the only one who's tired of these types of news articles that describe an exciting-sounding possible, hypothetical future innovation and present it as if i

by Timwi 4y ago

Am I the only one who's tired of these types of news articles that describe an exciting-sounding possible, hypothetical future innovation and present it as if it were already here? We've heard the same about “clean” nuclear power, about efficient energy storage in massive batteries, electric zero-emissions passenger aircraft, what have you. None of these things are real yet. Please, can we have news about things that are actually real? Tell me about the plastic-eating mushrooms when there is a landfill (or ocean) in which the mushrooms are actually, actively eating plastic. Until then, this is smoke and mirrors and creates an unhealthy false hope.

nsgi 4y ago
How does it present it as if it were already here?
metacritic12 4y ago
Do you have another path that you prefer more -- maybe degrowth?
- cassepipe 4y ago
  I think we are past the point of considering degrowth a mere option. Degrowth will happen. The question is whether it happens with us, or against us.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    We're kind of making it happen already - all around the world people are having less children than in the past.
cassepipe 4y ago
Even more so than some of those technologies, although they sound very promising don't address the issue about the intensity of the energy expenditure required by the developped world mode of life, and we are wasting most of it. Decarbonize everything but keep going like yesterday won't cut it. So your algae shoes are great but it is not sustainable to buy a pair every month. You plastic eating bacteria are great but we can't keep using so much plastic anyways. It's not that I don't want it to be possible, it's just that the current reports about the state of the planetary climate system seem to indicate that we are on the edge of a cliff and that we have to make the best/choices decisions to avoid falling off of it. It's not going to happen, it is happening. Please people don't call me a doomer and stop the denial. Go listen to the people that are actually studying climate. They're are not happy about it. And rich smart tech people are not here to save you. They will buy themselves islands with private guards is what they're gonna do.
- Retric 4y ago
  I don’t know where the idea that western style energy consumption is an issue, but the sun provides several orders of magnitude more energy than is needed. The vast majority of the energy humanity uses is actually sunlight hitting crops. Our dependence on fossil fuels is mostly a question of costs and existing infrastructure. We have hundreds of millions of ICE cars and the infrastructure to keep them fueled. Swapping that to EV’s over 40 days is impossible, but doing so in 40 years is relatively easy.
  - drekk 4y ago
    It's not just energy. You're responding to someone talking about how many things we buy and how much plastic we waste in general. Westerners need to learn that growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell. Even EVs are illustrating the problem. Rather than make transit efficient we're going to greenwash individual cars. Remind me where those EV batteries come from? Who cares about the externalities of lithium mining — just put multiple EVs in every home, widen the highways, add some interpasses. For people who don't have cars today (most of the world) will we be providing EVs as well? At some point it will be too late and people will experience a rapid decline in quality of life (it's already happening if you look at lifespan) with no recourse. Easier to be in denial about that than to, say, not eat meat every single day. Or not have same-day and two-day free delivery in a country where 80% of product transportation is done by truck. It would be nice to have a silver bullet, but the reality is people will have to make adjustments willingly or have it done for them by the biosphere. The Earth is going to be just fine. Whether or not we will remains TBD.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      > how much plastic we waste in general There is already an excess of carbon to get right there on the atmosphere. Again, the problem is how the plastic is made, not the sheer amount of it.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - 4y ago
drewm1980 4y ago
Some of those things do exist. The future doesn't arrive everywhere simultaneously.
solarengineer 4y ago
I, for one, like hearing about cutting edge research and discoveries. I am fine with not being able to right away purchase an implementation at a retail store.
bawolff 4y ago
Once something is in production it is not "news" anymore.
kaiusbrantlee 4y ago
How much time per day dop you spend looking for something to post your disdain about, as compared to how much time you actually focus on solutions? Im just curious
clairity 4y ago
oyster mushrooms exist right now in the supermarket and can eat plastic. that's something you can literally set up yourself. it's not like "in mice" studies, L5 self-driving, or grid stabilizing battery storage for renewables, which are actually far from realization.
klyrs 4y ago
> Am I the only one who's tired of these types of news articles that describe an exciting-sounding possible, hypothetical future innovation and present it as if it were already here? While I'm sure you're not the only one, I'm certainly nothing like you. One of the biggest draws for me to a site like this is the innovative technology. I love it. Sometimes it doesn't pan out -- actually, it's rare for any technology to be broadly useful soon after its invention. When I was a kid, LEDs were big, clunky, and red. Now they're making meters-long panels of full-color LEDs on a nearly microscopic pitch. The only solar panels were tiny and could only power a desk calculator. Those technologies impressed me back then, and the advancement continues to marvel. Electric vehicles have been exciting since Henry Ford made one. It took about 100 years for viable commercial EVs, and another 20 for wide adoption. Before Tesla, that would have made the list of "None of these things are real yet." I'm personally excited by what's on the frontier of technology. Whatever you can buy in the store today... that's the doldroms. Perhaps the risk of failure is what makes for genuine excitement?
- culi 4y ago
  > LEDs were big, clunky, and red Fascinating. Why were they red? Every LED bulb I've looked at has been a headache-inducing blue. I wanna buy LED bulbs for the energy efficiency but it's so hard to find one that doesn't emit so much blue light
  - yathern 4y ago
    > I wanna buy LED bulbs for the energy efficiency but it's so hard to find one that doesn't emit so much blue light I have a similar hatred of cool-blue lighting, at least in the home - but you should know it's very straightforward to find LED bulbs that look good these days. Just pay attention to the "temperature" - it will look like "3000k" or "4000k" on the box. Lower is warmer - 2400k is pretty identical to incandescent, though I go for 3000k. Some makers will label them "soft white" vs "daylight" or "warm white" - as far as I know, there's not much of a standard on those terms, but I can assure you that anything "daylight" or "bright white" will be blueish. Hope this helps!
    - 4y ago
11235813213455 4y ago
totally, something real is moving to light vehicles, plastic & oil (almost) free world for example why do we still sell plastic water bottles, in places where the running water is tested and perfectly good?
seltzered_ 4y ago
Haven't read the article fully, but the field of "mycoremeditation" has been around for a while and has been used for treating certain scenarios of toxic cleanup. See: Howard Sprouse of https://www.theremediators.com/ https://www.theremediators.com/ 2005 paper - “fungal diversity and use in decomposition of environmental pollutants” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408410500304066 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1040841050030406... 1992 Wariishi - guessing https://www.jbc.org/content/267/33/23688.full.pdf https://www.jbc.org/content/267/33/23688.full.pdf, though ‘Wariishi H’ has a bunch of papers https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=Wariishi+H&btnG=&oq=wa https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=War...
melagonster 4y ago
they need money to keep research or it never come true.

by Timwi 4y ago

nsgi 4y ago

How does it present it as if it were already here?

metacritic12 4y ago

Do you have another path that you prefer more -- maybe degrowth?

cassepipe 4y ago
I think we are past the point of considering degrowth a mere option. Degrowth will happen. The question is whether it happens with us, or against us.
- Tade0 4y ago
  We're kind of making it happen already - all around the world people are having less children than in the past.

cassepipe 4y ago

Even more so than some of those technologies, although they sound very promising don't address the issue about the intensity of the energy expenditure required by the developped world mode of life, and we are wasting most of it. Decarbonize everything but keep going like yesterday won't cut it. So your algae shoes are great but it is not sustainable to buy a pair every month. You plastic eating bacteria are great but we can't keep using so much plastic anyways. It's not that I don't want it to be possible, it's just that the current reports about the state of the planetary climate system seem to indicate that we are on the edge of a cliff and that we have to make the best/choices decisions to avoid falling off of it. It's not going to happen, it is happening. Please people don't call me a doomer and stop the denial. Go listen to the people that are actually studying climate. They're are not happy about it. And rich smart tech people are not here to save you. They will buy themselves islands with private guards is what they're gonna do.

Retric 4y ago
I don’t know where the idea that western style energy consumption is an issue, but the sun provides several orders of magnitude more energy than is needed. The vast majority of the energy humanity uses is actually sunlight hitting crops. Our dependence on fossil fuels is mostly a question of costs and existing infrastructure. We have hundreds of millions of ICE cars and the infrastructure to keep them fueled. Swapping that to EV’s over 40 days is impossible, but doing so in 40 years is relatively easy.
- drekk 4y ago
  It's not just energy. You're responding to someone talking about how many things we buy and how much plastic we waste in general. Westerners need to learn that growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell. Even EVs are illustrating the problem. Rather than make transit efficient we're going to greenwash individual cars. Remind me where those EV batteries come from? Who cares about the externalities of lithium mining — just put multiple EVs in every home, widen the highways, add some interpasses. For people who don't have cars today (most of the world) will we be providing EVs as well? At some point it will be too late and people will experience a rapid decline in quality of life (it's already happening if you look at lifespan) with no recourse. Easier to be in denial about that than to, say, not eat meat every single day. Or not have same-day and two-day free delivery in a country where 80% of product transportation is done by truck. It would be nice to have a silver bullet, but the reality is people will have to make adjustments willingly or have it done for them by the biosphere. The Earth is going to be just fine. Whether or not we will remains TBD.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    > how much plastic we waste in general There is already an excess of carbon to get right there on the atmosphere. Again, the problem is how the plastic is made, not the sheer amount of it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 4y ago

drewm1980 4y ago

Some of those things do exist. The future doesn't arrive everywhere simultaneously.

solarengineer 4y ago

I, for one, like hearing about cutting edge research and discoveries. I am fine with not being able to right away purchase an implementation at a retail store.

bawolff 4y ago

Once something is in production it is not "news" anymore.

kaiusbrantlee 4y ago

How much time per day dop you spend looking for something to post your disdain about, as compared to how much time you actually focus on solutions? Im just curious

clairity 4y ago

oyster mushrooms exist right now in the supermarket and can eat plastic. that's something you can literally set up yourself. it's not like "in mice" studies, L5 self-driving, or grid stabilizing battery storage for renewables, which are actually far from realization.

klyrs 4y ago

> Am I the only one who's tired of these types of news articles that describe an exciting-sounding possible, hypothetical future innovation and present it as if it were already here? While I'm sure you're not the only one, I'm certainly nothing like you. One of the biggest draws for me to a site like this is the innovative technology. I love it. Sometimes it doesn't pan out -- actually, it's rare for any technology to be broadly useful soon after its invention. When I was a kid, LEDs were big, clunky, and red. Now they're making meters-long panels of full-color LEDs on a nearly microscopic pitch. The only solar panels were tiny and could only power a desk calculator. Those technologies impressed me back then, and the advancement continues to marvel. Electric vehicles have been exciting since Henry Ford made one. It took about 100 years for viable commercial EVs, and another 20 for wide adoption. Before Tesla, that would have made the list of "None of these things are real yet." I'm personally excited by what's on the frontier of technology. Whatever you can buy in the store today... that's the doldroms. Perhaps the risk of failure is what makes for genuine excitement?

culi 4y ago
> LEDs were big, clunky, and red Fascinating. Why were they red? Every LED bulb I've looked at has been a headache-inducing blue. I wanna buy LED bulbs for the energy efficiency but it's so hard to find one that doesn't emit so much blue light
- yathern 4y ago
  > I wanna buy LED bulbs for the energy efficiency but it's so hard to find one that doesn't emit so much blue light I have a similar hatred of cool-blue lighting, at least in the home - but you should know it's very straightforward to find LED bulbs that look good these days. Just pay attention to the "temperature" - it will look like "3000k" or "4000k" on the box. Lower is warmer - 2400k is pretty identical to incandescent, though I go for 3000k. Some makers will label them "soft white" vs "daylight" or "warm white" - as far as I know, there's not much of a standard on those terms, but I can assure you that anything "daylight" or "bright white" will be blueish. Hope this helps!
  - 4y ago

11235813213455 4y ago

totally, something real is moving to light vehicles, plastic & oil (almost) free world for example why do we still sell plastic water bottles, in places where the running water is tested and perfectly good?

seltzered_ 4y ago

Haven't read the article fully, but the field of "mycoremeditation" has been around for a while and has been used for treating certain scenarios of toxic cleanup. See: Howard Sprouse of https://www.theremediators.com/ https://www.theremediators.com/ 2005 paper - “fungal diversity and use in decomposition of environmental pollutants” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408410500304066 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1040841050030406... 1992 Wariishi - guessing https://www.jbc.org/content/267/33/23688.full.pdf https://www.jbc.org/content/267/33/23688.full.pdf, though ‘Wariishi H’ has a bunch of papers https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=Wariishi+H&btnG=&oq=wa https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=War...

melagonster 4y ago

they need money to keep research or it never come true.