this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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solarpunk memes

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[–] [email protected] 111 points 7 months ago (6 children)

To my knowledge, with plenty of carbon emisssions

[–] CobblerScholar 34 points 7 months ago (20 children)

Is it less than using fossil fuels for power exclusively? If so then it's a step in the right direction. Yes I know it sounds like I'm shilling for BP now but we get lost in the doom spiral so fast we forget we are indeed making progress. We just have to keep their feet to the fire or...erm... solar panel?

[–] [email protected] 59 points 7 months ago (10 children)

They're not using electrolysis and water to make hydrogen, they're using power and steam to crack petroleum products into hydrogen.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Unfortunately, no. It's not. However, there is some nuance here. Even though their approach is more polluting, it allows infrastructure down the line such as modern cars to be upgraded to use hydrogen.

The hydrogen factory can then later be replaced by a non-polluting one. Much like how a lot of places switched to electricity while the power was being generated by natural gas. Some places moved to using nuclear later, and poof, carbon neutral.

In the end a transition is easier to divvy up progress with small architecture changes, not small bits of absolute carbon emissions / pollution

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Unless the energy is taken from renewable sources 🤓

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago

That would be nice, if it actually happened 🥲

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (5 children)

They aren't using dirty energy to do electrolysis, they're steam reforming methane. It isn't possible to do renewably.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Yeah, fuck the other 70% of energy from renewables you lose when converting to hydrogen

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[–] [email protected] 92 points 7 months ago (4 children)

It was sad when the Physics Girl took Shell's money to shill hydrogen fuel cells.

I get you need to eat but still....a very shitty move.

[–] conquer4 37 points 7 months ago (9 children)

I can't even come close to imagining her medical bills, can you?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Is she "ok" now? The last I knew she was completely incapacitated and couldn't get out of bed. One hell of "long covid" case... :(

[–] CleoTheWizard 18 points 7 months ago

That video is a really hard watch. If you’ve ever been in either of their positions taking care of a family member full time or relying on someone, you know the tremendous amount of love involved in it. Usually you see it as an afterthought, but what was amazing about Destin’s video is seeing it happen in real time.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

I have one of the conditions some doctors suspect is the root cause of long COVID, mast cell activation disorder, and it absolutely sucks ass if it's uncontrolled. It can make for some amazing naps, but they get old when it's all you can do.

I'm fine'ish now, although I guzzle the contents of a small pharmacy every month.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I.didnt know her at all before this comment chain.

But it is interesting.

By big fear short of everyone dying in covid was these symptoms would be far more widespread.

Everyone seems to have forgotten about covid now

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The videos were made before she got long covid. I don't know how well she's doing now. My only updates about her are from the host of veritasium and only when I go looking for his videos.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I remember coming away from her videos with the perception that hydrogen fuel cells are dumb. So she did a pretty bad job shilling it, if that is the case.

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[–] BackOnMyBS 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I haven't heard about this. Can you elaborate on what happened?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago

Kari Byron, formerly of MythBusters fame, recently put out an ad for Shell. I believe she's also committed to a 3 year "docuseries" for them. See here for a thread on Lemmy.world with a link to the video

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I can't find the specific video but here is the first video in her series: https://piped.video/watch?v=hghIckc7nrY

She says that the hydrogen is sourced using water and renewables but it's highly sus that Shell (or BP; I can't remember) was sponsoring the series.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Shell does that all the time. Among the oil companies, they seem to be the biggest advocates for hydrogen.

They 100% know that electrolysis methods won't be economically viable. The path through hydrogen goes through traditional hydrocarbon sources.

One maybe possibly exception is the recent finds of underground hydrogen sources. Still unclear if that's going to be economically viable. But even if it is, we would just add it to the list of decarbonized energy sources. We're not short of solutions; we're short of political capital to implement them.

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[–] Aceticon 62 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Well, supposedly almost all hydrogen was made not long after the Big Bang went bang, with a tiny bit getting once in a while produced by the spontaneous formation of particle and anti-particle pairs, if I'm not mistaken.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, but then it combines with stuff and is no longer hydrogen. For example, a lot of it on earth is bound with oxygen in a from known as dihydrogen monoxide. You can input energy to separate the two hydrogen from the oxygen, but it's not freely available. This is a useful way to spend excess energy to store the energy for later or to move, but not if you don't have excess clean energy.

You can also get some from things like Methane (CH4, aka natural gas). This is how most of the gas companies are producing it, and it obviously isn't clean. They like to pretend it's clean by saying using the hydrogen just produces water, but obviously the hydrogen didn't just appear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production

[–] Zehzin 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

My favorite way to get hydrogen is mixing caustic soda, water and aluminum foil. Only cause I think it's funny you can get very explosive things from the grocery store

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[–] CheeseNoodle 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Some is also produced by the decay of heavy elements (helium too)

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[–] Chestnut 39 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Is there a community for green memes like this? Love it

[–] [email protected] 34 points 7 months ago
[–] SpaceNoodle 28 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Where do you think we are?

[–] Anticorp 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

In a general meme community

[–] Glitchington 21 points 7 months ago (3 children)

In a meme community on a solarpunk instance.

[–] Chestnut 10 points 7 months ago

Didn't realize what instance I was on!

[–] Anticorp 8 points 7 months ago

Gotcha! I came here from the everything feed. I shall now subscribe!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

This is your stop, you can disembark the maglev! 😁

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (4 children)

With excess power from renewables. Which is highly inefficient. But better than not producing power when you could.

[–] [email protected] 78 points 7 months ago (2 children)

That's the ideal case, but in practice much of it is directly derived from natural gas instead of electrolysis

In 2022 less than 1% of hydrogen production was low-carbon.[1] Fossil fuels are the dominant source of hydrogen, for example by steam reforming of natural gas.[2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Hah! It's amazing how many people are still hanging onto the delusion that hydrogen is made from renewables when almost every ounce of commercial hydrogen fuel is made by cracking petroleum products.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

What you're saying is true. I still want to point out that developing hydrogen infrastructure based on non-renewable hydrogen today, helps lay the groundwork for using primarily renewable hydrogen tomorrow, because we're developing storage, transportation, and fuel cell technology.

Also: Methane can be produced from renewables, so developing steam reforming technology today, using non-renewable methane, helps lay the groundwork for renewable-based hydrogen production tomorrow.

Finally: Steam reforming lends itself well to CCS, so hydrogen production from renewable methane + CCS is a potentially viable path to a carbon-negative future.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (5 children)

You just pour water on solar panels or something.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago

Obviously they mean purified and stored hydrogen, fit for use and delivery as an energy medium.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Oil companies really made hydrogen sound evil. Maybe that's what they wanted all along.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Exactly. Hydrogen can be produced easily with all the green energy produced during off peak that is otherwise wasted.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But it's usually produced by processing oil instead.

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[–] Diplomjodler3 17 points 7 months ago (5 children)

All hydrogen was made just after the Big Bang.

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