danieldwilliam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
danieldwilliam) wrote2022-06-27 10:58 am
danieldwilliam) wrote2022-06-27 10:58 am
Entry tags:
On Useful Technologies for a World Experiencing Climate Change - First Draft
I was thinking over the weekend about the sort of technologies that will be useful in a world with significant climate change. I’ve come up with a tentative list of technologies that I think will do one of the following 1) reduce the chance of climate change occurring (or push it back in time) 2) reduce the direct impacts on human civilisation and prosperity of climate change 3) help us adapt and change more easily. This list is below. I’ve stuck a very short note on why I think they are important. Do feel free to comment with your own suggestions. Or to disagree with my selections. Or add other reasons why my selections are helpful.
I’ll be revisiting the list later so will update with additions, deletions and changes and then my plan is to spend a little time over the coming year doing a bit of a survey of the state of the art and the state of the ordinary for each technology. Some of them I’m very familiar with and some I know next to nothing about.
1. Energy – Renewable Electricity Availability
Being able to actually run the world’s energy requirements in a zero-CO2 way at approximately the same cost as today.
2. Energy – Renewable Energy is Very Cheap
Cheap (and I mean very, very cheap) energy makes a lot of currently existing technology able to be deployed at large scale. For example, desalinating water and pumping it long distances is prohibitively energy intensive when energy is expensive. Pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and converting it to fertiliser is also prohibitively expensive when energy is expensive.
3. Energy – Electrictification of Everything
The more things are electrified the easier it is to decarbonise their energy use.
4. Food – Vat Grown Meat
Meat production uses a lot of land and water. Not eating meat from live animals is a good way to avoid that resource use.
5. Food – Alternatives to animal protein
Meat production uses a lot of land and water. Not eating meat is a good way to avoid that resource use.
6. Food – drought resistant crops
In a world with more drought more drought resistant crops will help with food security.
7. Food – alternatives to palm oil and corn syrup
Both of these products are responsible for a lot of deforestation and we’ll need lots of trees.
8. Food – alternatives to agriculturally grown food
If we could grow all our food in wareshouses on the outskirts of our cities those cities could be anywhere and not reliant on any actual climate situation.
9. Tunnel Boring
Useful for mass transit systems and for building pumped hydro energy storage systems – which would be helpful if they were cheap to build and able to be built in more places.
10. Mass and Public Transport
Reducing fuel consumption and making dense cities more livable in.
11. Battery Tech
Energy density by mass and by volume. Life expectancy by time and cycles. Alternatives to lithium in production and alternatives to Lithium-Ion batteries in general, including ones more suited to bulk energy storage.
12. Lithium Seawater Extraction
The current best battery tech uses lithium. Lithium needs to be in plentiful supply. Being able to extract it from seawater cheaply would put a cap on lithium pricing.
13. Desalination
Water, probably important.
14. Autonomous Vehicles
Makes cities more livable, avoids lots of the costs of production of individual vehicles, makes cities more movable about in, helps public transport directly and indirectly.
15. Housing Energy Efficiency
Running homes in an energy efficient way will help avoid using energy and also reducing fuel poverty.
16. Geo-engineering
We may have to paint ourselves white to deflect the blast or the climate change equivalent.
17. Passive Cooling
In a warming world being able to keep cool without using energy is helpful.
18. Super Conductors
Very useful for long-range energy transmission and also for energy efficiency.
19. Super Computing for Weather Prediction
If the weather is going to be more extreme than very good predictions will help avoid loss of life and infrastructure
20. CO2 sequestration (forestry, CCS, pulling raw carbon out of the air, bio-char, carbon sequestration in building materials
We may need to actually pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.
21. Low Carbon / Negative Carbon concrete
Concrete releases a lot of CO2. Having concrete alternatives that are low CO2 or even better CO2 sequestering would be very helpful.
22. Iron and Steel coking alternatives
Lots of CO2 is produced in the steel industry. It’s energy intensive and use carbon as an input.
23. Fertiliser manufacturing
Fertilisers are a major product of fossil fuels and a major input to food production and a big opportunity to balance intermittent renewable electricity production with intermittent demand.
24. Subsea cabling
25. Treatments for antibiotic resistant bacteria
We do not need to add in any more pandemics to the world. Especially ones we can’t treat.
26. Tropical Medicine
With more of the world warm and more of the warm parts of the world also rich tropical medicine will be useful.
27. Aviation fuel alternatives
CO2 released from aircraft appears to be worse for climate change than CO2 released from a car. Also the energy density needed for long range air travel is a challenge.
28. Synthetic hydrocarbons to plastics industry
Reducing demand for fossil fuels and sequestering carbon in plastics
29. Recycling
Nothing is more energy efficient than not making something from new raw materials.
30. Synthetic textiles
A move away from especially cotton would help keep land for food production.
31. Weed and pest management
Weeds and live pests are going to move around a lot and interact badly with food production which is already having a difficult time. Meanwhile we probably don’t want to be dropping large amounts of expensive chemicals all over our farmland.
32. Autonomous targeted irrigation and fertiliser
Probably a useful way of keeping food production going in areas which are becoming unsuitable for it.
33. Water management and recycling
Water stress is going to be a major problem and a source of conflict. The better we are managing and recycling water the more we can avoid those problems and conflicts.
34. Refugee management
We are going to have many people, some rich, some poor, moving around the world – managing that will be useful
35. Democracy
We are going to have to make some difficult decisions and stick to them – democracy is probably a good way of doing that.
I’ll be revisiting the list later so will update with additions, deletions and changes and then my plan is to spend a little time over the coming year doing a bit of a survey of the state of the art and the state of the ordinary for each technology. Some of them I’m very familiar with and some I know next to nothing about.
1. Energy – Renewable Electricity Availability
Being able to actually run the world’s energy requirements in a zero-CO2 way at approximately the same cost as today.
2. Energy – Renewable Energy is Very Cheap
Cheap (and I mean very, very cheap) energy makes a lot of currently existing technology able to be deployed at large scale. For example, desalinating water and pumping it long distances is prohibitively energy intensive when energy is expensive. Pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and converting it to fertiliser is also prohibitively expensive when energy is expensive.
3. Energy – Electrictification of Everything
The more things are electrified the easier it is to decarbonise their energy use.
4. Food – Vat Grown Meat
Meat production uses a lot of land and water. Not eating meat from live animals is a good way to avoid that resource use.
5. Food – Alternatives to animal protein
Meat production uses a lot of land and water. Not eating meat is a good way to avoid that resource use.
6. Food – drought resistant crops
In a world with more drought more drought resistant crops will help with food security.
7. Food – alternatives to palm oil and corn syrup
Both of these products are responsible for a lot of deforestation and we’ll need lots of trees.
8. Food – alternatives to agriculturally grown food
If we could grow all our food in wareshouses on the outskirts of our cities those cities could be anywhere and not reliant on any actual climate situation.
9. Tunnel Boring
Useful for mass transit systems and for building pumped hydro energy storage systems – which would be helpful if they were cheap to build and able to be built in more places.
10. Mass and Public Transport
Reducing fuel consumption and making dense cities more livable in.
11. Battery Tech
Energy density by mass and by volume. Life expectancy by time and cycles. Alternatives to lithium in production and alternatives to Lithium-Ion batteries in general, including ones more suited to bulk energy storage.
12. Lithium Seawater Extraction
The current best battery tech uses lithium. Lithium needs to be in plentiful supply. Being able to extract it from seawater cheaply would put a cap on lithium pricing.
13. Desalination
Water, probably important.
14. Autonomous Vehicles
Makes cities more livable, avoids lots of the costs of production of individual vehicles, makes cities more movable about in, helps public transport directly and indirectly.
15. Housing Energy Efficiency
Running homes in an energy efficient way will help avoid using energy and also reducing fuel poverty.
16. Geo-engineering
We may have to paint ourselves white to deflect the blast or the climate change equivalent.
17. Passive Cooling
In a warming world being able to keep cool without using energy is helpful.
18. Super Conductors
Very useful for long-range energy transmission and also for energy efficiency.
19. Super Computing for Weather Prediction
If the weather is going to be more extreme than very good predictions will help avoid loss of life and infrastructure
20. CO2 sequestration (forestry, CCS, pulling raw carbon out of the air, bio-char, carbon sequestration in building materials
We may need to actually pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.
21. Low Carbon / Negative Carbon concrete
Concrete releases a lot of CO2. Having concrete alternatives that are low CO2 or even better CO2 sequestering would be very helpful.
22. Iron and Steel coking alternatives
Lots of CO2 is produced in the steel industry. It’s energy intensive and use carbon as an input.
23. Fertiliser manufacturing
Fertilisers are a major product of fossil fuels and a major input to food production and a big opportunity to balance intermittent renewable electricity production with intermittent demand.
24. Subsea cabling
25. Treatments for antibiotic resistant bacteria
We do not need to add in any more pandemics to the world. Especially ones we can’t treat.
26. Tropical Medicine
With more of the world warm and more of the warm parts of the world also rich tropical medicine will be useful.
27. Aviation fuel alternatives
CO2 released from aircraft appears to be worse for climate change than CO2 released from a car. Also the energy density needed for long range air travel is a challenge.
28. Synthetic hydrocarbons to plastics industry
Reducing demand for fossil fuels and sequestering carbon in plastics
29. Recycling
Nothing is more energy efficient than not making something from new raw materials.
30. Synthetic textiles
A move away from especially cotton would help keep land for food production.
31. Weed and pest management
Weeds and live pests are going to move around a lot and interact badly with food production which is already having a difficult time. Meanwhile we probably don’t want to be dropping large amounts of expensive chemicals all over our farmland.
32. Autonomous targeted irrigation and fertiliser
Probably a useful way of keeping food production going in areas which are becoming unsuitable for it.
33. Water management and recycling
Water stress is going to be a major problem and a source of conflict. The better we are managing and recycling water the more we can avoid those problems and conflicts.
34. Refugee management
We are going to have many people, some rich, some poor, moving around the world – managing that will be useful
35. Democracy
We are going to have to make some difficult decisions and stick to them – democracy is probably a good way of doing that.
no subject
Perennial grain crops look promising. As they keep regrowing from the same deep root system each year, they are less susceptible to dry periods.
7. Food – alternatives to palm oil and corn syrup
Interestingly, "coal butter" was once produced from coal using the Fischer–Tropsch process. It was inefficient, only creating about 2% as much food energy as was in the original coal; that's still better than current agricultural practices. If we have cheap energy, we could produce edible oils or simple sugars from carbon from waste products or atmospheric carbon.
21. Low Carbon / Negative Carbon concrete
Cut stone would be a nice alternative to concrete in many applications. It's not a direct replacement - you'd need to incorporate arches at the design phase to eliminate segments in tension. CNC machining and robotic material handling still are more expensive than concrete, so it'd need to be driven by appropriate charges for carbon emissions.
24. Subsea cabling
What advances do we need here in technology? Or do we just need more links?.
Subsea Cabling
So some of the technology we need for subsea cables is about persuading e.g. Singapore that they are safe relying on a subsea cable to an energy project in Australia or persuading Europe and Morocco to do business together. There is a reluctance to commit to cross-border reliance on energy infrastructure.
On a more physical technology basis it would be better if subsea cables a) cost less b) went further c) went in to deeper water and d) had less line losses. I think incremental improvements rather than radical improvements are needed.
Coal Butter
Coal butter sounds disgusting but I suppose it's margarine by another name and production method. And you are spot on (in my opinion) cheap energy unlocks the door to producing palm oil alternatives from waste or atmospheric carbon at a price that is competitive.
Perennial Grains
CNC Stone
no subject
I would add Food - Desert-adapted Agriculture Techniques to that list. For example: Olla Irrigation, i.e. "Buried clay pot irrigation: a little known but very efficient traditional method of irrigation".
Resuming Vernacular Architecture practices adapted to the climate/climate-to-be of the location where buildings are built or renovated. You can see a pretty pronounced shift away from vernacular architecture design when air conditioning was invented, and we'd all benefit from buildings being designed to be less dependent on air conditioning and fossil fuel-driven heating going forward.
Housing Co-operatives and other methods of more dense and more equitable human co-habitation. Stop having massive houses for just 1-2 people - that's an extremely inefficient use of resources to heat, cool, and maintain, especially when we have so many people simultaneously deprived of housing.
There's a big unmet need for economic innovations more generally - current capitalist system has a lot of perverse incentives against collective action to deal with climate change and hasten climate adaptation. Economy is a human creation, so economy can also be a technology to help (or hinder) us in addressing climate change.
Biodiversity-centric agricultural techniques - absolutely agree that there are better ways of dealing with weeds and pests than lots of pesticides. Biological control is more cost-effective in the long run and has a lot of beneficial side-effects beyond just the immediate farm where such methods are employed.
Technology (bacteria?) to decompose so-called 'Forever Plastics'. They're messing with every level of our food chain and our own bodies in ways we don't really understand, and currently it's just getting worse.
no subject
More economic growth driven by new technologies more broadly would help with climate change and it's impacts a lot. Much easier to spend money on climate adaptions when there is lots of money to go around. Much easier to treat climate change driven migrants well when they are viewed as a much needed extra labour resource in a growing economy and not as another mouth to feed from a fixed and shrinking supply.
And the social technologies of how to organise ourselves well, like housing co-ops or even just persuading people to live in densely populated urban environments and make living in those environments a good experience will be helpful for sure.
Food
7. Food – alternatives to palm oil and corn syrup
Problem is that these use less land per calorie than other crops, so "coal butter" sounds tempting.
8. Food – alternatives to agriculturally grown food
Growing food in warehouses, or underground might help with extreme wind, rain, heat and cold and pests (not sure about the last) and if yeasts or similar are grown in vats the energy efficiency should be much better, but can you grow more crops from an acre of solar panels than a one acre field ?
We should grow crops between wind turbines, but there are lots of the UK where it is windy and grass grows so much better than other crops that you could probably justify raising meat on the grass.
Re: Food
I think there are two considerations. One is can we grow the same or more product on the same land using coal butter or algae or something else. Secondly, can I grow that stuff in a warehouse in on the ring road of a major city or in semi-desert land instead of prime rainforest growing country.
8 - Food Alternatives to agriculturally grown food.
I'm thinking vertical farms here.
If I recall correctly - and I may very well not be doing so - solar panel efficiency is between 20% and 40% sunlight hitting the panel converted to electricity.
Chlorophyll is about 5% efficient. It only picks up a narrow band of wavelengths. So I think you can take a 20% efficient solar panel and turn that electricity in to growing lights only emitting in the narrow spectrum required by plants and get a 4 to 1 advantage in usable "sunlight" from the plants point of view. So your 1 acre of farmland becomes 4 acres of growing space. And then you add additional yield from being inside and the hydroponic growing medium and so on.
I think rearing lamb and wool on windy marginal land under wind turbines is the logical choice but I'm not sure how the marginal cost of production stacks up against vat grown meat and synthetic textiles. It's one of the things I want to poke about in.
Re: Food
One reason Norman Borlaug saved so many lives was that his semi-dwarf wheat spent less time and energy growing stalks than traditional crops, and thus produced more edible parts. Without a need to resist weather, insects, and extremes in temperature, we could develop crops with spindly stems, little to no bran, and leaves that just sprawl on the growing medium.
White Leghorn hybrid chickens in an indoor factory farm lay an order of magnitude more eggs than a Southeast Asian Red Junglefowl. We might optimize crops the same way.
Re: Food
Re: Food
e.g. A short article featuring several people doing this in their backyards in CA.
In Boston, there's a coalition working on creating food forest sites in local community gardens throughout the city to improve local food access and neighborhood engagement.
Re: Food
I'd been aware of the multi-level approach to food growing in tropical market gardens but I'd not seen the conscious effort to adopt in in North America.
no subject
no subject
I think the Chinese would say that, though, wouldn't they? I mean,they are not entirely wrong but they are probably doing a much worse job of representing the people and avoiding corruption themselves.