Would you be able to avoid leaking back into the grid?
During a recent major weather event outage, a neighbor up the street was running a generator, that I think was not properly islanded. I experienced it by having some devices making weird sounds because they were receiving some low level voltage. They were probably leaking to tens of neighbors and losing generator output in the process.
This doesn't put power back through the home. It acts more like a UPS. You plug in the stuff you need up during an outage to the back of it like a power strip.
Yikes! I’ve heard so many similar sounding examples of misuse of generators and sketchy generator setups. Pila has the grid disconnect built in so there’s no risk of un-intended backfeed when islanded
Right! Unintentionally back-feeding is a huge safety risk, and I hope that smarter safer solutions will prevail over the all-too-common hacky unsafe approaches. But also, I get it. I’ve wired generators back into panels - safely - in situations where it’s that or no power for days, you start taking matters into your own hands
Not to forget a stat about the number of "airline account name-change" e-mails sent to some (hopefully) junk e-mail account for each "name change". Ideally in relation to destination web-page design and amount of junk javascript embedded therein.
It is one of many viable solutions and humanity is working on many or most of them. We need them all. Seaweed would be great as cattle feed is one of the pathways this highlights.
It doesn't do as much as you think for cattle feed as most the high % numbers you see touted are only looking at feedlot emissions - which are only 11% of overall cattle emissions. Actual reductions are pretty small
>What’s more, feeding cattle algae is really only practical where it’s least needed: on feedlots. This is where most cattle are crowded in the final months of their 1.5- to 2-year lives to rapidly put on weight before slaughter. There, algae feed additives can be churned into the cows’ grain and soy feed. But on feedlots, cattle already belch less methane—only 11 percent of their lifetime output
[...]
>Unfortunately, adding the algae to diets on the pasture, where it’s most needed, isn’t a feasible option either. Out on grazing lands, it’s difficult to get cows to eat additives because they don’t like the taste of red algae unless it’s diluted into feed. And even if we did find ways to sneak algae in somehow, there’s a good chance their gut microbes would adapt and adjust, bringing their belches’ methane right back to high levels.
[...]
> All told, if we accept the most promising claims of the algae boosters, we’re talking about an 80 percent reduction of methane among only 11 percent of all burps—roughly an 8.8 percent reduction total
The authors' argument about the 8.8% reduction hinges on both their assumption that it wouldn't be feasible to add to cows' diets on pastures and the uncertain possibility their guts would adapt and mitigate the effectiveness.
Yet the articles they cite (which both quote the same study) describe that on a diet of 0.75% seaweed (0.25% more than the research I saw years prior) only some cattle didn't like the taste and there was an unspecified reduction in feed intake, which hardly seems the foregone conclusion the Wired authors make it out to be. While the aspect about cows' gut reactions long term is also unknown, though one of their links mentions both a 72 and 90 day trial which showed no gut adaption or reduction in effectiveness which is said to be hopeful since 'most adaptations happen within a few weeks'.
Ironically the On Pasture link Wired cites for their argument against is more neutral/optimistic and also mentions that two other more common types of seaweed reduce methane output by 20% and encouraged experimenting with for cattle diets.
I would agree with you. In the first sentence the writer puts Breda in southern Holland in stead of in Brabant. That is just wrong to somebody from Brabant.
This is something that I think most people recognize when they see journalism about a subject they know much about. Journalism often seems really limited and dumbed down when you know a subject and the journalistic piece is short. But then when you don't know a subject, it seems really good and valuable and you learn a lot (ignoring that it must seem dumbed down to somebody else).
Your bafflement is baffling about the wrong question. People who eat vegetarian may on occasion want to eat a meat replacement product for the flavor of it. They would not make it a major component of their diet.
On the other hand, these products can displace meat consumption in diets that consume unnecessary volumes of meat, which will also be generally beneficial due to less resource use.
But this is measured by cup for many of the items on the list.
E.g. Avocado is #3 but I would not eat a cup of Avocado per day. I do eat a banana most days. And I eat half an avocado, which weighs in the order of a 10th of the weight listed for a cup.
This narrative is not bad, but also not quite good.
It is good because it is positive and expresses confidence that we can do this.
It is bad in where it ignores the emissions caused by land use and resource consumption. Those are not addressed with advanced technology. Those are addressed oftentimes by going back from advanced technology - but in a way that does improve life styles and wellbeing of the people providing you with resources. You can play a role by choosing those resources - which does put you in the place of having to do some amount of moral judgement.
No. The heart of the problem is this narrative.
Granted, you paint the picture that is the prevalent narrative, but narratives can change.
There are profitable solutions out there today and many have a potential to scale. Paul Hawken has done some great work recently describing them and calculating their contribution potential (https://drawdown.org and https://regeneration.org)
I think this is too narrow a view, covering only the supply side. What about demand? Why does everybody only want to live on the peninsula?
Traffic is a big factor there. We have a total and complete lack of modern/fast public transport reaching out into the outlying areas and unlocking their potential.
During a recent major weather event outage, a neighbor up the street was running a generator, that I think was not properly islanded. I experienced it by having some devices making weird sounds because they were receiving some low level voltage. They were probably leaking to tens of neighbors and losing generator output in the process.