I would love to see train tracks with solar panels above, the infrastructure could be used for energy transport as well to load balance between localized generation networks. There's certainly a lot more that could be done with rail lines, the key is not to expect one size fits all solutions and to work on developing integrated networks with whatever suits the local situation best.
Depends where your skills and interests lay but maybe consider making the coolest window box you can grow small leaf and herbs in to add to your cooking.
Maybe even consider starting plants to the stage they're ready to plant out and find someone with shared interests local who has a garden.
Yeah, it's not yet got everything Reddit had but I've found a lot of great communities which are really enjoyable to participate in so I'm enjoying it more here
Yeah everything about this just makes it ever more clear that we need to escape the manipulation of the big tech companies because they'll all work together to establish their monopoly and milk us for every penny
Read this as Norwegian, was slightly confused.
Something that really can help learn how your plants are doing is timelapse video, I make an open source tool that makes it easy to do long durations using a raspberry pi and webcam but there are loads of ways to do it.
Apart from that just get to know the plants, they're so fascinating and when you know how they grow and what they're doing at each stage you'll notice problems do much easier
Everything is limited in what crops it can grow, if we can maximize the productivity of space in semi urban areas then we can use the other space for crops that best suit it - grains are great for distant rural farms because they store so well, same with potato, etc where you can fill a huge truck and drive into the city once every season but stuff like greens and herbs lose so much after only a few days from being picked so you either need expensive chilling or other processing or a small lorry taking a load every few days which really isn't a great way of doing anything
It can also be really good in areas where the climate isn't great for year round growing, with enough PV you'll still get enough to power the LEDs which you can put close above the plants and have on for 17 hours where as the natural sun might not be as bright or steady, also if you have like a wall unit inside then you don't need to worry about frost, slow growth due to cold or hot weather scorching. Having herbs growing inside really improves the quality of a room too, that fresh smell is nice.
Freshness is such a key thing, the difference is taste is so significant especially with herbs and greens so enabling people to have an easy to manage and small footprint little tower of good food in their garden, balcony, or similar would be really good especially for renters if it could be packed up for transport then resembled in the new location.
Yeah so much amazing potential, I've working on some ideas for a semi automated wall system, the idea is you have rows that are basically rails and you slide a pod in with seeds one side and take out the top one to harvest and reseed - the unit has a glass front so it's like a thin greenhouse, provides a little extra insulation and protection for the house as well as using the escaping heat in winter to keep the plants a little warmer, probably not ideal for a hot climate but somewhere like the UK it would be perfect.
It would be for things like leaf greens, maybe radish, short carrots, or other quick growing veg that would be good to have on a continuous cycle. I want it to have a single place to put water in and possibly a tap connection or tank so people can pretty much fill and forget - the glass should keep it safe from burgling little birdies that like to sneak into greenhouses and eat all the shoots, as well as other pests.
For the test ones I'm going to build I got some big bits of perspex used as COVID screens that shops were going to bin, well worth looking out for as such a waste otherwise. I made some clay from a hole I dug in my garden so would love to make a lot of it from earthenware, if I can get some good designs I'd love to make 3d printable molds. It's energy intensive firing ceramics but I saw some amazing solar concentrater kilns which would be great for a small collective or something making something similar.
Looks interesting, I'll give it a listen thanks
I agree though it always annoys me when people claim we've done absolutely nothing - it's an incredibly hard problem and people in and out of governments have been working on solutions and implementing them where possible. It takes time to develop workable technologies and to implement them efficiently but in a lot of places this is happening and we should highlight things that are working and showing promise so that good ideas spread, just saying 'everything is bad and we're going to die' isn't going to convince anyone to get on the right side of things but demonstrating we have lots of great ideas and emerging solutions which offer benefits even beyond climate protections just might.
from a study showing we can reach 100% renewable energy usable globally before 2050, and that's just based on current rollout of existing technologies using existing methods and economies - automated construction tooling and fully-automated fabrication is going to greatly boost the rate at which adoption of new technologies can happen, and that's without any black-swan developments which might come about especially through the use of AI r&d tools (such as those making huge leaps in chemistry and pharmacology currently) - though again as the study demonstrates we don't even need these things to come about, and while our focus absolutely should be on protecting the ecology and climate of the planet we probably don't even to have everyone onboard because transition to wind and solar is economically sensible too.
Albania, Iceland, and Paraguay already obtain all their electricity from Renewable sources (hydro mostly), Sweden is getting close to 70% and very much on track to reach it's target of 100% before it's 2040 goal, Costa Rica is up at about 98% Renewables, Scotland ~97% with them on track to generate 50% of overall energy consumption (transport, heat, electrical) from renewables - big industrial countries are making huge progress too, Germany is now over 50% renewable and heavily ramping up the rate of adoption, on par with China who are also just over 50% and increasing rapidly (after heavy investment in technology and infrastructure to facilitate this change) - even the united states now has [slightly] more generation from renewables than coal AND more nuclear than coal -
Calling this 'jack shit' is absurd, and it's only one strand of all the things people and governments have been working on, we're working hard to understand the problem, monitor it, develop and implement solutions which allow us to try and keep things working for everyone and keep everyone alive. It's not like we can just turn off oil or something, not only would millions die but it would undoubtedly start endless wars which would result in even more widespread chaos and climate destruction while ending all the positive steps people are working on. It's an incredibly difficult challenge but we're equipped to deal with it and if everyone that cares tries to pitch in a bit and work towards a better world then it's absolutely possible - defeatism and doomerism isn't going to get us anywhere.