this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
931 points (94.2% liked)
The memes of the climate
1423 readers
2 users here now
The climate of the memes of the climate!
Planet is on fire!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah we already have the technology needed, we have to implement them.
And much of the tech is actually very old. Electric trains are like a century old. So for a lot of things, we have to re-implement technology we foolishly removed.
Oil was just a bad technology path. Gotta get back on the right path.
The technology path is fine, the adoption isn't.
Path: plastics are miracle materials. Lots of great uses for it.
Adoption: mass producing single use throwaway shit everything.
Long term plastic aren't as big of an issue as one time use plastics are. Wax paper and aluminum containers can both replace consumable bottles for instance.
Our battery tech is not up to par, and chances are, will never be. Need something in replacement. Nuclear, not the same, but good enough.
Nuclear trains and cargo ships might actually be necessary, even. In North America and over oceans, getting the vehicle weights, the weights of cargo and the distances between cities to work under any reasonable system means not just DC but even AC are insufficient in transmission range on land (and of course useless in the middle of an ocean), and companies like Amazon and AliExpress account for a lot of direct climate-disrupting emissions and a good chunk of the wealth letting assholes like Bezos live like kings at everyone else's detriment.
While nuclear container ships would be very useful for reducing emissions I'm not sure I want to trust shipping companies with nuclear reactors given the track record of ship accidents and noncompliance with environmental regulations. Feels like they'd just dump the nuclear waste into the ocean.
Also piracy would suddenly become a much bigger issue.
Nuclear trains, WTF? There have been electric trains for over a century. In fact most Diesel trains actually have electric motors powering the wheels with a diesel generator powering the electric motors. Instead of having to think about repercussions of what happens when a nuclear powered train derails in a populated area, why not just run some overhead wires over the tracks like people have been doing for a century?
One of the problems with hydrogen is the lack of density means there's a need for larger fuel tanks. This is less of a problem for cargo ships and trains than it is for most other vehicles. And again less worry of nuclear materials being hauled around population centers or in areas where there's pirate activity.