I find it odd that, even though we have all this innovation in materials science, we still haven't found functional replacements for the 6000+ hydrocarbon derivatives used in virtually every industry on Earth. Beyond farming and renewable energy, do stories about preparing for a new material culture that spans the full scope of materials in society exist? These new chemicals allegedly have some place in the real world, but for whom and at what cost?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/google-deep-mind-ai-predicts-2-million-material-structures-for-real-world-tech
There is a relationship between sustainable materials and population management. Unsustainable materials have allowed human populations to decouple from their environments. Behind the guise of CO2, but primarily due to the future scarcity of fossil fuels, the managerial state is using economic means (i.e. inflation, manufactured supply chain disruptions, war, etc.) to force us to reduce our consumption, because technology hasn't been able to increase material efficiencies to balance the scale of global consumption at current human population levels. Urban life, with all its petrochemicals, is completely reliant on crude oil and natural gas. Electric cars and green energy are only a part of the larger solution. Polymers, adhesives, reagents, solvents, composites, organometallics, semi-conductors, pharmaceuticals, etc. all use petrochemicals in their supply chain. The chemistry isn't there to fully replace them, so we need to think about life after industrial capitalism while we try to find a few replacement molecules critical for sustained survival. This is not out of some puritanical or ideological slant, but because nothing else is materially feasible. As we reimagine our relationship with technology, we may learn that many puritanical ideals are more harmful to life than using the principle of balance and harm reduction in everything we do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojK05pVOlhshttps://void.cat/d/YFStPFiVLvGoyvyK4JBriL.webp
So I'm coming from the perspective of someone who is an abolitionist, a believer in transformative justice, and a queer of color. Punitive measures and punishment is a sign of a weak community. You can keep members accountable without digital cages, striping of rights, or secret blacklists.
nostr:naddr1qqyhyetsd3uj6em40ypzqak8r2hr5jglrk0wc37t59lz98x6gyf6pwaku6hpwakhvslznjh6qvzqqqr4gu5xgs5d
Anybody else hear about SiegedSec gay furry breach at Idaho National Laboratory? ☠️ Decided to try to unpack the material side of the renewed interest in nuclear energy...
nostr:naddr1qqxnzdesxqmrwwfkxccrwdehqgsrvx5qz6t663a68t54q66vgyllge6mclwvddlef5wjm3u96a3035qrqsqqqa28r2kgq6
Even if we switch to all renewable energy sources, like solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, carbon emissions would persist.
This is because carbon emissions largely come from oxygen reacting with carbon-containing molecules, which includes fossil fuel combustion, burning wood, plant and animal respiration, as well as organic decay.
Carbon is a fundamental building block of life and is present in nearly everything, from the food we eat to the materials we use. Complete elimination of carbon emissions would disrupt the carbon cycle and the basis of life itself.
There is a direct relationship between technology, the population size of biological species, the carbon cycle, and carbon emissions. Without some serious materials engineering sorcery to create materials from non-carbon resources, reducing carbon emissions too much would lead to population contraction and death. Renewable energy and financial growth are not proxies for material production.
I've been following AFPI for a while now, and they finally uploaded to Odysee. This video is a little dark, but it shows why we need something like decentralized green chemistry to help us find sustainable materials. The materials we use for energy are not the entirety of our material culture. We still have to make stuff. And shouldn't communities get to decide how they collaborate with other species and use natural processes to create eco-friendly habitats?
https://odysee.com/@yourAFPI:e/replace-hydrocarbon-feedstocks:a?r=4pwcJ4YFD1SWYVpPMXXDYKLqU974fSGD
Even if we switch to all renewable energy sources, like solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, carbon emissions would persist. We need sustainable materials to complement renewable energy, because at current consumption levels we're on track to exhaust oil and natural gas in the next 50 to 55 years.
Many solar panels and turbines are made using materials like polymers, which are often derived from petrochemicals, for parts like blades, frames, backsheets, and encapsulants.
Additionally, the process of manufacturing the silicon used in solar cells can involve chemicals that are petrochemical-based.
While researchers are studying alternative materials, they have not been widely implemented or made available at the scale needed to immediately replace current methods.
Biomass can potentially provide many of the smaller feedstocks that fossil fuels do, but scaling up biomass production to meet all our current needs would require a significant amount of land, water, and other resources, which could have environmental and social impacts.
Additionally, the technology for converting biomass into more complex chemicals and materials is not developed. What exists is not as efficient or cost-effective as fossil fuel processes yet, meaning it can't support current population sizes or facilitate increases in production capacity.
Without some serious materials engineering sorcery to create materials from non-carbon resources, reducing carbon emissions too much would indirectly lead to population contraction and mass death. Renewable energy and financial growth are not proxies for material production.
The third round of talks to develop an international agreement on polymer manufacturing is underway. "The [UN] policy is expected to cover the whole life cycle of plastics, from extraction to...production and design to their use, consumption and disposal...."
Sustainable materials that leverage biological species and artificial organisms should not be held privately. DeSci and OpenSci in green chem can help keep interspecies collaboration and knowledge accessible.
https://www.unep.org/inc-plastic-pollution/session-3/documents#InformationDocumentsSecretariat
Been thinking about decentralized science lately. Wrote a quick take on green chemistry today... nostr:naddr1qqxnzdesxqeryde3xvengdpeqgsrvx5qz6t663a68t54q66vgyllge6mclwvddlef5wjm3u96a3035qrqsqqqa28nlnn6t
https://void.cat/d/Bfxrig9BKH9XjRC5avoxib.webp
I wrote a quick take on decentralized green chemistry the other day. I feel like desci needs to be complemented with open science and biomaker spaces or biohacker spaces. I'm not a trained chemist, but you can get surprisingly far with self-teaching and ChatGPT. I feel like the academic version of the discipline obfuscates the simplicity of chemistry in practice. https://habla.news/a/naddr1qqxnzdesxqeryde3xvengdpeqgsrvx5qz6t663a68t54q66vgyllge6mclwvddlef5wjm3u96a3035qrqsqqqa28nlnn6t
What do you think about going broader to decentralized chem? The oil moguls back in the day sold hydrocarbons into every industry (incl. health), but at the end of the day they were just chemicals owned by an oligarchy. A decentralized green chemistry would revolutionize research in a lot of industries and open science could transform knowledge ownership. Physics underpins chemistry, it can bridge to quantum too. I wrote a quick take on decentralized green chemistry the other day... https://habla.news/a/naddr1qqxnzdesxqeryde3xvengdpeqgsrvx5qz6t663a68t54q66vgyllge6mclwvddlef5wjm3u96a3035qrqsqqqa28nlnn6t
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