Tag: climate

Casein Fermentation

Vegan cheese has been quite disgusting to date. But not the mozzarella that I tasted. The missing ingredient has been the casein protein of milk (and until now, it could only be had from milk). Melding innovative microbial fermentation science and traditional cheesemaking, New Culture’s mozzarella is the first animal-free cheese to melt and stretch. When I tasted it, it tasted, smelled, and stretched like milk cheese. The cheese is healthier (cholesterol and lactose-free) and better for the environment: of all food products, cheese requires the most water and is 3rd in greenhouse gas emissions and land use. Producing cheese from casein fermentation rather than animal milk reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and land and water usage by orders of magnitude, making the New Culture approach radically more climate-friendly than animal farming.

2023-03-13: A bit more progress

28 companies have sprouted up to develop milk proteins made by yeasts or fungi. The companies’ products are already on store shelves in the form of yogurt, cheese and ice cream, often labeled “animal-free.” The burgeoning industry, which calls itself “precision fermentation,” has its own trade organization, and big-name food manufacturers such as Nestlé, Starbucks and General Mills have already signed on as customers.
The dairy industry, with its clout and hefty lobbying budget, may not agree there is room for everyone: In 2022, US cow dairy had ceded 16% of all retail milk sales to plant-based milk. Plant-based milk companies also may not welcome the competition, especially if cultivated dairy products are positioned as more sustainable and less resource-intensive. A glass of almond milk takes 90 liters of water to produce.

Haber-Bosch

50% of the nitrogen in our bodies came from the Haber–Bosch process. It’s in every protein and every strand of DNA. Ponder that — “50% of the nitrogen in your blood, your skin and hair, your proteins and DNA, is synthetic.” The Haber-Bosch process catalyzes the production of ammonia (NH3) from N2 and H2 gas. We need “fixed nitrogen”, available to our organic chemistries as atomic nitrogen. It is the limiting factor for the growth of all food. While nitrogen gas is about 80% of our atmosphere, not one atom of it is available for our use when tightly bound by the triple bond of N2 gas, the strongest chemical bond in nature. It is sequestered all around us. In nature, N2 is liberated to atomic nitrogen in small amounts by lightning strikes (it needs 1000°C) and slowly by nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil. Hager argues that if we reverted to relying on just those natural sources, 3b people would die of starvation in short order — our soils simply could not produce enough food for the mouths now on Earth. The Haber process consumes 4% of the world’s natural-gas production and 1.5% of the world’s energy supply.

2021-11-30: There’s a potential replacement:

The process is as clean as the electricity used to power it, and produces around 53 nanomoles of ammonia per second, at Faradaic efficiencies around 69%. The highest reported previous efficiencies for ammonia electrolysis sat around 60%, with the exception of 1 other lithium cycling approach that managed 88%, but required high temperatures of 450 °C. The team says it’s massively scalable, capable of operating either at industrial scale, or in extremely small on-site operations. “They can be as small as a thick iPad, and that could make a small amount of ammonia continuously to run a commercial greenhouse or hydroponics setup, for example.” This kind of distributed production model, as we explored looking at FuelPositive’s modular, container-sized ammonia production units, would have additional benefits in that it would eliminate the distribution and transport that contribute significantly to the financial and emissions costs of the current ammonia model.

2022-05-04: What happens when you think you can do without Haber-Bosch.
2022-07-22: The same team was able to improve ammonia electrolysis further, with 3x yield and nearly 100% energy efficiency.

We investigate the role of the electrolyte in this reaction and present a high-efficiency, robust process enabled by compact ionic layering in the electrode-electrolyte interfacial region. The interface is generated by a high-concentration imide-based lithium salt electrolyte, enabling stabilized ammonia yield rates of 150±20 nmol s-1 cm-2 and current-to-ammonia efficiency closely approaching 100%.

Phanerozoic Temperature

By combining global temperature estimates from geological data with estimates of tropical temperatures obtained from oxygen isotope studies, it is possible to produce an estimate of the global average temperature for any time in the past. The modern global average temperature is 14.5˚C. The average global temperature for the last 540 ga is 20˚C, but the temperature has fluctuated between 25˚C (hothouse) and 10˚C (icehouse). During the Permo-Triassic Extinction, the global temperature spiked above 28˚C. Most of the time, the global temperature gently rises and falls in response to gradual changes in orbital and solar parameters, ocean currents, sea level, atmospheric chemistry (greenhouse gases), and other factors. These changes occur over millions of years. Rarely, there is a drastic change in one of these factors resulting in either rapid global warming (Kidder–Worsley events) or rapid global cooling (Stoll-Schrag events). These abrupt climate excursions take place over 1000s of years, rather than millions of years.

the world was colder than today only 2% of the time in the last 540 ga.

Great Green Wall

The “Great Green Wall”, has helped raise total forest coverage to nearly 25% of China’s total area, up from less than 10% in 1949. In the remote northwest, though, tree planting is not merely about meeting state reforestation targets or protecting Beijing. When it comes to making a living from the most marginal farmland, every tree, bush and blade of grass counts – especially as climate change drives up temperatures and puts water supplies under further pressure.

2022-02-04: Apparently people are really bad at naming, since there’s another Great Green Wall project in Africa:

In the mid-2000s, African leaders envisioned creating a huge swath of green that could help combat desertification and land degradation. The project, called the Great Green Wall, began in 2007 with the aim of planting a 15 km wide belt of trees and shrubs that would extend from the coast of Senegal on the Atlantic to Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. The World Bank has poured over $1b into this endeavor, and the initiative’s scope has grown to include efforts to fight poverty, reduce inequality and build climate-resilient infrastructure. In ecological terms, the program has been a huge success. As of 2020, nearly 4000 km2 of land has been restored to arability in Niger alone.

2023-05-13: As always, projects in developing countries that are declared “huge successes” are not, on closer look

The pace of financing is too slow to achieve this target. As of 2020, 20% of degraded land (200k km2) had been restored and 350k of the promised 10m jobs had been created. That is mainly, although not solely, because just US$2.5b of a required $30b has been spent since the project began. Donors have committed $15b to a pipeline of 150 projects. It’s not clear how much of this is grants, how much is loans and how much is existing funding relabelled as Great Green Wall money. Moreover, coordination between Great Green Wall countries and donors is weak. Trust between the African Union and international donors is in short supply. Donor nations seem to be picking and choosing which countries to invest in, with a preference for those in relatively stable regions.

Microwave boilers

Arrays of these devices beam microwaves into water in a boiler, heating it up. The pipes that carry the water are also made of microwave-sensitive materials, as is the insulation that lags them. And a heat exchanger recycles residual waste warmth. The upshot is a boiler that is 96% efficient. The best existing gas boilers rarely exceed 90%.

CO2 comes down to China / India

89% of the additional greenhouse gases came from just 2 countries, China, which alone accounted for 69% of the increase, and India. Emissions from the EU, Japan and US fell, and by 2018 were lower than they were in the 1990s.


2021-12-22:

Yes, China’s fossil fuel use is astronomical, but it’s also the world’s largest installer of renewable power – by some distance – and it’s set to go much bigger. The country is leading the way in other clean energy technologies and the scale of its carbon-cutting plans has taken many by surprise.

Siberia is the future

A great transformation is underway in the eastern half of Russia. For centuries the vast majority of the land has been impossible to farm; only the southernmost stretches along the Chinese and Mongolian borders, including around Dimitrovo, have been temperate enough to offer workable soil. But as the climate has begun to warm, the land — and the prospect for cultivating it — has begun to improve. 20 years ago, the spring thaw came in May, but now the ground is bare by April; rainstorms now come stronger and wetter. Across Eastern Russia, wild forests, swamps and grasslands are slowly being transformed into orderly grids of soybeans, corn and wheat. It’s a process that is likely to accelerate: Russia hopes to seize on the warming temperatures and longer growing seasons brought by climate change to refashion itself as one of the planet’s largest producers of food.

US climate innovation

To reduce duplication, focus the government’s efforts, and get the most innovation out of every $ of funding, we should create a new organization, the National Institutes of Energy Innovation. This the most important thing the US can do to lead the world in innovations that will solve climate change. Creating these institutes wouldn’t be an exercise in simply moving boxes around an organizational chart and hoping for a better outcome. We actually have a model for setting things up in a better way, and evidence that it produces results. That model is the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is the largest single funder of biomedical research in the world, and its impact is simply mind-blowing. Scientists supported by the NIH have mapped the human genome, resulting in tests or treatments for 10s of genetic diseases. They have helped cut deaths from heart disease by 66% in the past 50 years. Since 1980, NIH-supported research has contributed to the discovery of more than 150 new drugs, vaccines, and novel uses for existing drugs. The Gates Foundation’s work in global health simply would not be possible without the countless advances made by the NIH.

Why is the NIH so successful? It has a clear and specific mission. It has apolitical leaders who let independent researchers follow the science, rather than political staff who change priorities every few years. It’s organized in a way that empowers each of its separate institutes and research centers. And it has strong bipartisan support from policymakers and the public.

Liquid-filled window

When sunlight hits the liquid-filled window, the water begins to absorb the heat, blocking it from entering the room. The hydrogel causes the liquid to turn opaque in sunlight, further reducing thermal transmission. The result is that less energy is required to cool the space. As the sun goes down, the window turns clear again and the heat is released. As a side bonus, the liquid between the panes also doubles as a sound insulator. Testing indicating that it “reduces noise 15% more effectively than double-glazed windows.”

Superwhite Paint

Superwhite paint will cool the earth

This paint would be both cheaper to produce than its commercial alternative and could save $1 per day that would have been spent on air conditioning for a 1-story house of 100m2. It would take 37 liters to paint a 100m2 house. The world makes 55m tons of paint a year. Saving $1 a day would mean a payback for 37 liters of paint in 6-12 months. If paint production was doubled and the new production was used for this superwhite paint then 100K square kilometers could be painted every year.

2023-04-04: Rethinking how paint works can get us even farther

Unlike pigments, which require a different base molecule—like cobalt or purple snail slime—for each color, the base molecule for this process is always aluminum, just cut into different-size bits that oscillate to light at different wavelengths. It’s the lightest paint in the world— both in terms of weight and temperature. The paint consists of aluminum flakes dotted with aluminum nanoparticles. A Boeing 747 needs 500kg of paint. This paint could cover the same area with 1.3kg. Unlike conventional paint, structural paint doesn’t absorb infrared radiation, so it doesn’t trap heat. It can keep surfaces 10 degrees Celsius cooler than conventional paint.