@benroyce @blogdiva @GhostOnTheHalfShell just to note, your take's logical conclusion is nihilism. If humanity didn't exist there wouldn't be any footprint. If the universe didn't exist there wouldn't be any problems. but that's just not how it works.

by all means, reuse, reduce, recycle. But it has been widely disproven that e.g electric cars "are not worth it", or that solar panels have a limited lifespan. That's propaganda from the fossil fuel industry that defeats your own point if anything

@anthropy @benroyce @blogdiva

Oh right because the mining industry, and the solar panel manufacturing industry is being completely honest with you.

Think about the supply chain necessary to build any piece of technology and understand that the dirtiest most criminal economic sectors are telling you that everything is really green.

Who’s worse big oil or big mining?

@benroyce @anthropy @blogdiva

I’m not gonna let you slide on this idea that I am being a perfectionist. I’m telling you that you have to revisit what you’ve been told effectively by the worst polluting industries in the most destructive industries on the planet, the mining sector, and to bring the same level of realism to their own statements that you bring to big oil or big tobacco

@benroyce @GhostOnTheHalfShell @anthropy @blogdiva completely absent from the discussion is that the PV panels and batteries are - with existing technology - nearly entirely recyclable back into service as improved-efficiency versions of the same general products. Fossil fuels, hydroelectric, nuclear... no one's making any new uranium or petroleum, but the sun will keep shining for another couple billion years

@benroyce @GhostOnTheHalfShell @anthropy @blogdiva As to the battery issue, the good news is that lithium batteries are recyclable so over time lithium mining can get greatly reduced once we reach “peak battery.” Recycling batteries could provide a majority of the lithium needed, though there would always be a need for lithium mines.

Compare to oil which isn't recyclable and always needs to be replaced as we use it.

@paneerakbari @benroyce @anthropy @blogdiva

If we look at the actual recycling of PV, they turned out to be about as bad as general plastic recycling.

Recycling is contingent on cost structure. It's cheaper to throw the stuff away and build from scratch that it is to recycle. Economically you know how that ends up.

But in addition to this, you can't 100% recover anything and often if you try to recover one thing, it concludes the possibility of recovering the other materials.

@paneerakbari

These things exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

You can make more fuel than you use (I know it sounds like fiction but it's actually scientifically sound and has been demonstrated at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and elsewhere)

@benroyce @GhostOnTheHalfShell @anthropy @blogdiva

@ChuckMcManis @benroyce @GhostOnTheHalfShell @anthropy @blogdiva Breeder reactors don't output more uranium than what is fed into the system, they make more *fissible* material than they are supplied with

"Orange juice from concentrate" isn't more oranges than it took to produce

Our world's matter-system is all but a closed loop, we're not getting - or making - more of it. But our is bombarded by all the energy we could use and we let it just slip away because there's no gold-pressed latinum

@paneerakbari

Yes, but the point of the Oak Ridge demonstration was a nuclear fuel cycle that ran "forever." Not trying to divert this wonderful discussion, just noting that 'nuclear' can be 'renewable' 😃. I too rage against folks who just want to go back to living in caves with 99% of the current population gone.

@benroyce @GhostOnTheHalfShell @anthropy @blogdiva

@ChuckMcManis @paneerakbari @GhostOnTheHalfShell @anthropy @blogdiva

while i generally like breeder reactors you have to admit the teensy tiny problem that this is how we make plutonium for bombs

this is why breeder reactors are downplayed

otherwise i agree

@benroyce

Yeah there is that downside. When my kids were younger we talked about how as technology became more sophisticated, it also becomes more capable. And capability has both good and bad vectors associated with it.

@paneerakbari @GhostOnTheHalfShell @anthropy @blogdiva

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @benroyce @anthropy @blogdiva ok sure thing bud
maybe your soapbox of "everyone needs to go without" could kick off with us being deprived of your unicorn-hunting nihilism and foreclosed doom

This is just as much why we can't have nice things as the economic bogeyman

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @anthropy @blogdiva

unread

uninterested

all you do is help the fossil fuel industry

i will force you to unfollow me now

and fuck you and your stupid fucking toxic idealism that only helps fossil fuels

you're either an agent provocateur shill or too stupid to see the only real effect of your perfectionist bullshit