Geologists doubt Earth has the amount of copper needed to develop the entire world
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"General, we need to consult all of the local meth addicts, stat."
The poor will have scavenged the abandoned buildings in built-up areas, yes. Still-occupied buildings and those in smaller towns with no easy access to a scrapyard are more likely to be intact. So it's more likely to be a case of "these are no longer to code, they are not grandfathered, you have a two-year grace period to switch them out" (staggered geographically or by building classification to avoid a run on plastic pipes) plus "road trip!"
We might also end up mining older dumps for stuff discarded when copper was cheaper.
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This was my first thought, we aren't going to develop the whole world. That's not how this works. Who said that was a goal of... well ... anyone's?
That's a rhetorical question. Frfr tho, does that remind me work on your instance only, or what's the deal with that?
Just banking on some bot figuring out how to do this within the next 15 years.
There used to be a bot like this on that site that was run by that troubled young man who decided to focus exclusively on monetization to selfishly help fund lawsuits related to multiple instances of trespassing on farms and being found pants down fucking chickens.
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Abolish copper coins. Job done
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What I mean is that the bulk of current copper wiring goes towards distribution and consumption, not generation.
Yes, but big batteries everywhere is going to effect that if there's copper in lithium batteries, and apparently there is.
This isn't a big thing. This is a constant thing in every system. It's the push and pull between efficiency and resiliency. More storage capacity is less efficient when things are going well, but is more resilient and adaptable when they're not.
Excess storage capacity, sure.
But inflating the base battery capacity to cover people having showers at 5pm because it's easier than storage water heaters and time/remote controls is stupid. You can reduce the base need for batteries by reducing the need for electricity in the first place and reducing the use of vehicles that need to carry batteries in place of e.g. overhead catenary.
But inflating the base battery capacity to cover people having showers at 5pm because it's easier than storage water heaters and time/remote controls is stupid. You can reduce the base need for batteries by reducing the need for electricity in the first place and reducing the use of vehicles that need to carry batteries in place of e.g. overhead catenary.
A solution that doesn't take into account human nature isn't a solution.
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Abolish copper coins. Job done
Largely done already, as I understand it. Most use zinc now.
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Fuck, even more plastics?
Plastics aren’t inherently bad. Just like anything else, it’s the misuse that makes them bad.
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This smells a little funny, as others have suggested. I read an article a while ago that suggested that we're not running out of raw materials; we're thinking about the problem wrong:
Chachra proposes that we could – we must – treat material as scarce, and that one way to do this is to recognize that energy is not. We can trade energy for material, opting for more energy intensive manufacturing processes that make materials easier to recover when the good reaches its end of life. We can also opt for energy intensive material recovery processes. If we put our focus on designing objects that decompose gracefully back into the material stream, we can build the energy infrastructure to make energy truly abundant and truly clean.
This is all outlined in the book How Infrastructure Works from Deb Chachra.
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How much old copper piping is still out there that could be replaced by other materials to recover the copper? I'm sure there are other common obsolete applications. The nice thing about metals is that we already have a pretty robust recycling chain in place for them. That plus the remaining supply plus aluminium plus other replacements plus careful design to minimize the use of copper where it's absolutely necessary might be enough to carry us through.
There's also the idea of crashing a metallic asteroid somewhere convenient, like the Outback.
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There's also the idea of crashing a metallic asteroid somewhere convenient, like the Outback.
Yeah, that ain't happening for the next 50 years. The amount of logistics and technology required for that is beyond immense, never mind risks
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this website is cancer. I'm I'm mobile and counted 6 ads in my view with space left for 3 lines of text. Don't post crap like this. Yes, i normally use an ad blocker but this is inside the connect app
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it could be theess of a website but i saw no link to a peer reviewed publication, so i think its safe to assume were good with he cooper
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Plastics aren’t inherently bad. Just like anything else, it’s the misuse that makes them bad.
Yeah, just a little pollution is okay as long as you don't misuse it.
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Well the earth is already developed enough so i guess the copper was enough???
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Yeah, just a little pollution is okay as long as you don't misuse it.
There are a staggering number of varieties of plastics, and an insane number of uses for them that aren’t easily replicated with other known materials. Some of those plastics are much worse than others.
Plastic is not inherently “pollution.” That’s not to say that plastics don’t make up a significant amount of the world’s pollution, but like literally everything in life, it’s not as simple as a black-and-white.
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This smells a little funny, as others have suggested. I read an article a while ago that suggested that we're not running out of raw materials; we're thinking about the problem wrong:
Chachra proposes that we could – we must – treat material as scarce, and that one way to do this is to recognize that energy is not. We can trade energy for material, opting for more energy intensive manufacturing processes that make materials easier to recover when the good reaches its end of life. We can also opt for energy intensive material recovery processes. If we put our focus on designing objects that decompose gracefully back into the material stream, we can build the energy infrastructure to make energy truly abundant and truly clean.
This is all outlined in the book How Infrastructure Works from Deb Chachra.
That would be great except for one problem: capitalism. Proper recovery and recycling of materials will never happen so long as production of new materials is cheaper.
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What is this publication and who finances it because this section is incredibly sus:
Copper use is not carved in stone. Hybrid cars, which pair small batteries with gasoline engines, need far less of the metal than fully electric vehicles.
Power grids that mix nuclear, wind, solar, and a pinch of natural-gas backup can slice the copper bill dramatically compared with battery-heavy systems.
“First of all, users can fact-check the study, but also they can change the study parameters and evaluate how much copper is required if we have an electric grid that is 20% nuclear, 40% methane, 20% wind, and 20% hydroelectric, for example,” Simon said. “They can make those changes and see what the copper demand will be.”
Like you think we can transition to an increasingly electrified world, where all power comes from electric utility lines, and you think our copper usage will be ... just in renewable power plants?
This reads like straight fossil fuel propaganda. In an electrified future the majority of copper use comes from distribution lines and products that use electricity not the type of power plants generating electricity.
Most electrical transmission lines are aluminum because it's cheaper and lighter
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Well the earth is already developed enough so i guess the copper was enough???
Catch me in Uganda
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Yeah, that ain't happening for the next 50 years. The amount of logistics and technology required for that is beyond immense, never mind risks
Well, I suspect we've got enough copper for the next 50 years, so... good timing.
And, you don't start with a Manhattan sized rock, you practice with little ones just big enough to survive re-entry and work your way up. The key is learning to operate long term with "rock moving tech" in solar orbit. We're not there, which is why we should have started 50 years ago...
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Yeah, that ain't happening for the next 50 years. The amount of logistics and technology required for that is beyond immense, never mind risks
Oh, and you say risks, I say: military application potential.
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Ea-Nasir, you sold me an insufficient earth!!!
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What is this publication and who finances it because this section is incredibly sus:
Copper use is not carved in stone. Hybrid cars, which pair small batteries with gasoline engines, need far less of the metal than fully electric vehicles.
Power grids that mix nuclear, wind, solar, and a pinch of natural-gas backup can slice the copper bill dramatically compared with battery-heavy systems.
“First of all, users can fact-check the study, but also they can change the study parameters and evaluate how much copper is required if we have an electric grid that is 20% nuclear, 40% methane, 20% wind, and 20% hydroelectric, for example,” Simon said. “They can make those changes and see what the copper demand will be.”
Like you think we can transition to an increasingly electrified world, where all power comes from electric utility lines, and you think our copper usage will be ... just in renewable power plants?
This reads like straight fossil fuel propaganda. In an electrified future the majority of copper use comes from distribution lines and products that use electricity not the type of power plants generating electricity.
Do they think the copper is consumed? Like, renewable resources burn copper?!
