I recently read, and recommend a book titled "Here Comes the Sun" by Bill McKibben.
There's a passage where a calculation is made of the amount of minerals that have to be mined in order to build renewable energy to cover all current energy needs.
This quantity is huge. However it is equivalent in mass to the amount of fossil fuels that are extracted every year.
The major difference is that the equipment for renewable energy will last decades whereas the fossil fuels are burned and need to be dug up constantly, for ever.
Solar panels etc. will last decades and can and will be recycled afterwards. Further, most materials needed for renewable energy infrastructure (iron, lithium) are highly abundant on earth. Most of the suppliers work to use cheaper (=more abundant) materials in their products, replacing lithium with sodium in batteries and silver with copper in solar panels. Wind turbine blades are produced now using re-solvable resins.
Not only are older solar panels recyclable, but efficiency gains in panel construction mean that multiple newer panels can be created with the resources from older panels.
Wind turbines are not recyclable[1]. Besides, the foundations use a massive amount of concrete (nowadays often extracted from the seabed, with all the problematic ecological consequences involved), that stays forever in the ground.
Existing wind turbines turbines are not recyclable - new wind turbines are.
Except, that's not even true. Some existing wind turbines are not recyclable.
Except that's not entirely true either! The tower portion of the turbine is usually steel, and easily recyclable! The nacelle, too. It's the base and the blades that can't be recycled.
Except that's not entirely true either! Existing turbine blades are made (mostly) of fibreglass, which is made of the fibre and the resin. The fibres aren't reliably as strong when recycled (which makes them not-very-useful when recycled), but the resin is just fine. And of course, if the blade is e.g. carbon fibre, then you can either re-use it or just burn it.
So, you statement should be that some (components of) existing wind turbines cannot be profitably recycled with current technology.
The wind turbine's concrete base doesn't need to be smashed up or ignored, incidentally - it can be re-used. Concrete is much sturdier than the e.g. gearbox.
None of this is economically profitable, which is why right now it ends up in massive landfils. The concrete base is reinforced with steel beams and weights so much that you can't move it.
Also sorry but I would require a citation for "new wind turbines are recyclable". That the tech exists doesn't mean that all installed turbines have it.
Concrete recycling is actually a pretty big deal. For most of building history here the standard material to put behind basement walls, retaining walls, and so on, for drainage was crushed scoria. Now it's crushed concrete. Some amount of effort but you're recycling existing stuff, and they recover the reinforcing steel as well.
Who cares? Those blades and that concrete are totally inert and just sit in the ground after their useful life. The ground already has lots of rocks in it.
The problem is that those power sources are marketed as "renewable" (they aren't as they quickly end in landfills), are intermittent, require fossil fuels for when the wind doesn't blow, and are not profitable.
One could also say that they change heavily natural landscapes, but this is a matter of taste.
The finiteness of fossil fuels isn't real in a practical sense.
The globe burnt about 8.8 billion tons of coal in 2024. Which is a huge amount. This is the peak, most estimates are that we will reduce from there.
Australia alone estimates that it has 147 billion tons of economically recoverable coal. That is Australia alone could supply the entire globe at peak usage for over 16 years. And Australia only has about 14% of the globes coal reserves, we can keep burning coal at this pace for at least the next hundred years. And it a hundred years the scope of what we consider to be economically recoverable will have expanded greatly, further increasing our supply.
A more sci-fi apocalyptic angle on this fact is the argument that fossil fuels, especially easily accessible ones, are necessary to bootstrap a futuristic multi-planetary civilization. They provide the easy energy necessary to support an industrial revolution and the society and technology level necessary for more advanced and renewable forms of energy necessary to really build and sustain an advanced civilization long term.
But because they take so long to form, stumbles along the path of energy advancement mean a planetary civilization could run out of fossil fuels before reaching the level of advancement necessary to move beyond them. At that point, the civilization is essentially doomed since they lack the technological ability to move beyond fossil fuels and they lack the energy resources necessary to develop that technology.
CO2 can be converted to methane. It just isn't profitable to do so yet. After the fossil fuels are depleted, it will be a viable niche for storable energy where renewables aren't practical.
Once fossil fuels run out, most exclusively-fossil-fuel-based activities will simply cease to be economically feasible.
That doesn't contradict your statement, of course. But in the long term the fossil fuel niches will start looking more like today's rocket-fuel niches.
Methane synthesized from excess renewable power can store that renewable power for years, handily fixing the whole "Sun don't shine every day" problem.
It's durable energy storage and can be easily moved around like liquid fuels.
It also would remove CO2 emissions from things like airplanes, which won't be able to be battery powered in the near future, and could renewably replace chemical feedstocks in lots of industrial processes.
But this requires immense industrial capability, probably some serious innovation in absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere because that's basically an unsolved problem right now, and a massive oversupply of solar power which cannot happen under market systems because nobody builds infrastructure to sell power at below market rates.
True. The situation for both off-gassing and plastic recycling is rather bleak.
Sorry for being vague; I was only referring to economically valuable minerals used in electric batteries.
Aqua Metals has previously said they'll be able to reuse battery quality graphite (from batteries) as well (vs releasing it as CO2). But my recent scan of their progress wasn't very encouraging.
Learning more about Redwood Recycling stack is on my to do list.
My father doesn't eat sweets. He has a very healthy diet - whole grains, vegetables, etc. Never had a cavity nor gum disease.
Because of that he never went to the dentist to have a check up.
He ended up loosing all his teeth from hardened plaque below the gum line.
His teeth just fell off, one after another, because he never learned good dental hygiene.
At least in the US, the argument is that when pressed by the FDA, Novamin was pulled from the market by GlaxoSmithKline instead of doing the required trials whereas Biomin went through and passed all the trials.
And since it's actually gone through the process, there are studies out that compare it to other hydroxyapatite solutions. I've linked one study which compares their two variants against Apacare and karex (two HAp toothepaste which have studies of their own that compare against the others before them like Novamin).
The study shows that Biomin C (the one without Fluoride) is comparable to karex (the one without fluoride) and other similar HAp toothepastes. HAp + fluoride (like novamin) marginally outperforms it. So if you use fluoride (such as by also using a fluoride toothpaste or living in an area with fluoride in the water) the difference should be negligible. Importantly though for people in the US, Biomin C is available here.
Biomin F is wrapping up the FDA approval process however it does seem to generally outperform all other formulations since the fluoride is actually part of the bioglass itself rather than simply an additional active ingredient in the suspension.
TLDR: Biomin C is within marginal differences to comparable no-fluoride HAp toothpastes on the market but Biomin F outperforms other HAp toothpastes that contain fluoride since the fluoride in Biomin F is delivered via the same mechanism that handles remineralisation of the other elements. And to my knowledge Biomin F is the only HAp toothpaste to do that so far. Also Biomin C is the only HAp toothpaste available in the US (with Biomin F apparently soon to follow).
I had severe GERD for years. On an off PPI's for almost 5 years, several endoscopies, pain 24h per day.
It was so the bad I almost went for surgery.
Then I tried the low fodmap diet and it went away.
Now I only have to avoid alcohol, onions, garlic and sweet fruits to keep it at bay.
A few friends who started reporting GERD all the time at the start of the pandemic, didn't make the connection between working and eating in bed or the sofa at times, and the gradual worsening, compounded with the usual inflammatory foods and sleeping on the wrong side or without any inclination, the body's buffer depletes so to speak and those issues appear more frequently.
They can't debug the airframe change (moved the new big fans forward). That should have triggered a new type certification. Instead we got a software coverup which the regulators OK'd so the airlines would not have to pay for pilot training on a new aircraft type.
I have been working on a game as a side project for 10 years now. Why such a long time? It started when I was freelancing and carried on through full-time jobs, a marriage and now a small child. I am lucky if I can get one hour a day to work on it - but as others mentioned here, the best time to work on it is before your main job, otherwise I am too tired to code after a full day of software development, childcare, and home chores.
I really wish I can finish it some day and show it here.
As someone who as been taking these for 3+ years and is utterly scared of these news I would just like to add a few data points regarding my experience that might help others:
- an endoscopy revealed level 1 oseophagitis
- triggers for me include: coffee, tea or any other source of caffeine, fried and high fat foods, alcohol, acidic fruits, high protein foods.
- an experiment with betaine HCL + pepsin was very painful. After that I learned that pepsin is as bad or worse to your oesophagus than stomach acid.
- cider vinegar: same result as betaine HCL + pepsin.
- digestive enzymes: no change.
- pro-biotics, including kefir: no change.
- cutting gluten, dairy and sugar: no change.
- ranitidine: works but effectiveness drops rapidly.
- on-going experiments: liquorice and low-fodmap diet, no conclusions yet.
went through almost all of your points actually. though my symptoms were "gastro-attacks" of frightening intensity where i'd end up in hospital. ended up having gallbladder removed after test showed it very-low functioning and had complete recovery. took PPI's still intermittently, but tapered off after a couple years.
