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Butter made from carbon tastes like the real thing, gets backing from Bill Gates

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  • cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34272214

    A California-based biotechnology startup has officially launched the world's first commercially available butter made entirely from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, eliminating the need for traditional agriculture or animal farming. Savor, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, announced the commercial release of its animal- and plant-free butter after three years of development.

    The revolutionary product uses a proprietary thermochemical process that transforms carbon dioxide captured from the air, hydrogen from water, and methane into fat molecules chemically identical to those found in dairy butter. According to the company, the process creates fatty acids by heating these gases under controlled temperature and pressure conditions, then combining them with glycerol to form triglycerides.

    but does it actually taste like the real thing? because I can already buy something that, supposedly, I should be unable to believe isn't real butter, but after doing so I remain suspicious

  • but does it actually taste like the real thing? because I can already buy something that, supposedly, I should be unable to believe isn't real butter, but after doing so I remain suspicious

  • but does it actually taste like the real thing? because I can already buy something that, supposedly, I should be unable to believe isn't real butter, but after doing so I remain suspicious

    The first time I had "I can't believe it's not butter," I said "I can believe it's not butter."

  • cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34272214

    A California-based biotechnology startup has officially launched the world's first commercially available butter made entirely from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, eliminating the need for traditional agriculture or animal farming. Savor, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, announced the commercial release of its animal- and plant-free butter after three years of development.

    The revolutionary product uses a proprietary thermochemical process that transforms carbon dioxide captured from the air, hydrogen from water, and methane into fat molecules chemically identical to those found in dairy butter. According to the company, the process creates fatty acids by heating these gases under controlled temperature and pressure conditions, then combining them with glycerol to form triglycerides.

    I'm not a scientist, but isn't EVERYTHING made of carbon?

    Source: Joni Mitchell, Woodstock -

    We are stardust, we are golden
    We are billion-year-old carbon

  • cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34272214

    A California-based biotechnology startup has officially launched the world's first commercially available butter made entirely from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, eliminating the need for traditional agriculture or animal farming. Savor, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, announced the commercial release of its animal- and plant-free butter after three years of development.

    The revolutionary product uses a proprietary thermochemical process that transforms carbon dioxide captured from the air, hydrogen from water, and methane into fat molecules chemically identical to those found in dairy butter. According to the company, the process creates fatty acids by heating these gases under controlled temperature and pressure conditions, then combining them with glycerol to form triglycerides.

    This could be great, but "proprietary". Gates is still the same Gates. If you want to save all the land and CO2 this could, release the IP free to all. Flood the market with cheap indistinguishable synobutter, real butter can't compete with. Milk, cheese and yogurt next please.

  • I don’t eat carbon-based foods. Exotic silicon lifeforms, fresh from Titan’s methane seas.

  • "Savor says they take carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water"

    I'm no expert but direct air capture of Co2 and water electrolysis both use a lot of power. So using them for this purpose is likely just a marketing gimmick that doesn't make any sense either economically or for the climate.

    That depends entirely on the method used to generate the power. In fact carbon capture only works if you use renewable energy to capture the carbon, otherwise there's literally no point.

    How it is made in the lab may or may not be sustainable, but it's a proof of concept so it doesn't really matter. If this were commercialised then you would use renewable energy, perhaps solar panels on top of the factory building, although you could just connect to a green grid. Clearly the facility will be constructed somewhere other than the United States.

  • Perhaps. But if we really go hard on green energy, we'll likely have a lot of excess energy in the daytime, so it makes sense to look into alternatives to land and water intensive products (like dairy and beef) that are heavy on electricity. If it's a more efficient use of land to have solar panels instead of cows eating grass (and solar panels work just as well on farmland as they do in the desert, unlike grass), then it makes a ton of sense even if it spikes electricity consumption.

    Butter is rather low volume, so maybe it's doable. But it's very hard to compete with self-replicating organisms that have evolved specifically to use the energy sources, materials and conditions that are abundant on this planet. I'd be more more interested if someone had made a plant make butter.

    Having a bunch of machinery sit idle waiting for power to be cheap isn't particularly good use of resources either. We'd be better off trying to store the power.

  • cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34272214

    A California-based biotechnology startup has officially launched the world's first commercially available butter made entirely from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, eliminating the need for traditional agriculture or animal farming. Savor, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, announced the commercial release of its animal- and plant-free butter after three years of development.

    The revolutionary product uses a proprietary thermochemical process that transforms carbon dioxide captured from the air, hydrogen from water, and methane into fat molecules chemically identical to those found in dairy butter. According to the company, the process creates fatty acids by heating these gases under controlled temperature and pressure conditions, then combining them with glycerol to form triglycerides.

    There's a term for that high-carbon butter-like substance. Migraine or something..

  • I'm not a scientist, but isn't EVERYTHING made of carbon?

    Source: Joni Mitchell, Woodstock -

    We are stardust, we are golden
    We are billion-year-old carbon

    "Made of" can mean "composed of" or "constructed from". This is the latter:

    Savor says they take carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heat them up, oxidize them and get a final result that looks like candle wax but is in fact fat molecules like those in beef, cheese or vegetable oils.

    The entire process releases zero greenhouse gases, uses no farmland to feed cows, and despite its industrial appearance, has a significantly smaller footprint.

    "In addition to the carbon footprint being much lower for a process like this, right, the land footprint is, like, a thousand times lower than what you need in traditional agriculture,"

    Good example of how choice of words can mislead, particularly when intentional.

  • Butter is rather low volume, so maybe it's doable. But it's very hard to compete with self-replicating organisms that have evolved specifically to use the energy sources, materials and conditions that are abundant on this planet. I'd be more more interested if someone had made a plant make butter.

    Having a bunch of machinery sit idle waiting for power to be cheap isn't particularly good use of resources either. We'd be better off trying to store the power.

    Storing power is expensive and many energy storage techniques require a lot of resources to produce. The more we move toward solar generation, the more we should plan on being opportunistic with energy when it is plentiful

    For example, electrolysis isn't the most efficient way to store power, but if energy is cheap, it may be better on net to do it opportunistically when there's excess energy and use that hydrogen for things like producing artificial butter (and perhaps fuel mobile equipment like forklifts and delivery trucks).

    Cows aren't particularly efficient at turning biomass into human food. There's a ton of waste in the process, and they need a lot of space. A factory doesn't need to sustain life of an organism, it just needs to turn one set of compounds into another. Maybe it's not there now, but getting it there will be a lot easier than genetically engineering a much better cow.

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    All the research I am aware of - including what I referenced in the previous comment, is that people are honest by default, except for a few people who lie a lot. Boris Johnson is a serial liar and clearly falls into that camp. I believe that you believe that, but a couple of surveys are not a sufficient argument to prove the fundamental good of all humanity. If honesty were not the default, why would we believe what anyone has to say in situations where they have an incentive to lie, which is often? Why are such a small proportion of people criminals and fraudsters when for a lot of crimes, someone smart and cautious has a very low chance of being caught? I think this is just a lack of imagination. i will go through your scenarios and provide an answer but i don't think it's going to achieve anything, we just fundamentally disagree on this. why would we believe what anyone has to say in situations where they have an incentive to lie, which is often? You shouldn't. edit : You use experience with this person or in general, to make a judgement call about whether or not you want to listen to what they have to say until more data is available. You continue to refine based on accumulated experience. Why are such a small proportion of people criminals and fraudsters when for a lot of crimes, someone smart and cautious has a very low chance of being caught? A lot of assumptions and leaps here. Firstly crime implies actual law, which is different in different places, so let's assume for now we are talking about the current laws in the uk. Criminals implies someone who has been caught and prosecuted for breaking a law, I'm going with that assumption because "everyone who has ever broken a law" is a ridiculous interpretation. So to encompass the assumptions: Why are such a small proportion of people who have been caught and prosecuted for breaking the law in the uk, when someone smart and caution has a very low chance of being caught? I hope you can see how nonsensical that question is. The evolutionary argument goes like this: social animals have selection pressure for traits that help the social group, because the social group contains related individuals, as well as carrying memetically inheritable behaviours. This means that the most successful groups are the ones that work well together. A group first of all has an incentive to punish individuals who act selfishly to harm the group - this will mean the group contains mostly individuals who, through self interest, will not betray the group. But a group which doesn’t have to spend energy finding and punishing traitorous individuals because it doesn’t contain as many in the first place will do even better. This creates a selection pressure behind mere self interest. That's a nicely worded very bias interpretation. social animals have selection pressure for traits that help the social group, because the social group contains related individuals, as well as carrying memetically inheritable behaviours. This is fine. This means that the most successful groups are the ones that work well together. That's a jump, working well together might not be the desirable trait in this instance. But let's assume it is for now. A group first of all has an incentive to punish individuals who act selfishly to harm the group - this will mean the group contains mostly individuals who, through self interest, will not betray the group. Reductive and assumptive, you're also conflating selfishness with betrayal, you can have on without the other, depending on perceived definitions of course. But a group which doesn’t have to spend energy finding and punishing traitorous individuals because it doesn’t contain as many in the first place will do even better. This creates a selection pressure behind mere self interest. Additional reduction and a further unsupported jump, individuals are more than just a single trait, selfishness might be desirable in certain scenarios or it might be a part of an individual who's other traits make up for it in a tribal context. The process of seeking and the focused attention might be a preferential selection trait that benefits the group. Powerful grifters try to protect themselves yes, but who got punished for pointing out that Boris is a serial liar? Everyone who has been negatively impacted by the policies enacted and consequences of everything that was achieved on the back of those lies. Because being ignored is still a punishment if there are negative consequences. But let's pick a more active punishment, protesting. Protest in a way we don't like or about a subject we don't approve of, it's now illegal to protest unless we give permission. That's reductive, but indicative of what happened in broad strokes. Have you read what the current government has said about the previous one? I'd imagine something along the lines of what the previous government said about the one before ? As a society we generally hate that kind of behaviour. Society as a whole does not protect wealth and power; wealth and power forms its own group which tries to protect itself. Depends on how you define society as a whole. By population, i agree. By actual power to enact change(without extreme measures), less so Convenient that you don't include the wealth and power as part of society, like its some other separate thing. You should care because it entirely colours how you interact with political life. “Shady behaviour” is about intent as well as outcome, and we are talking in this thread about shady behaviour, and hence about intent. See [POINT A]
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    But do you also sometimes leave out AI for steps the AI often does for you, like the conceptualisation or the implementation? Would it be possible for you to do these steps as efficiently as before the use of AI? Would you be able to spot the mistakes the AI makes in these steps, even months or years along those lines? The main issue I have with AI being used in tasks is that it deprives you from using logic by applying it to real life scenarios, the thing we excel at. It would be better to use AI in the opposite direction you are currently use it as: develop methods to view the works critically. After all, if there is one thing a lot of people are bad at, it's thorough critical thinking. We just suck at knowing of all edge cases and how we test for them. Let the AI come up with unit tests, let it be the one that questions your work, in order to get a better perspective on it.
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    They have a tiny version that is listed as 1000 on their website, plus the simulation is FOSS
  • No Internet For 4 Hours And Now This

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    My first set I made myself. The "blackout" backing was white. The curtains themselves were blue with horses I think (I was like 8). I later used the backing with some Star Wars sheets to make new curtains.
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    I pretty much agree. The only thing I would add is that it's not our place to tell others to lose weight or to point out their weight; people already know they are overweight and that it's unhealthy. We shouldn't be policing other people's bodies. It's also possible to be overweight and have body positivity; being overweight doesn't equate to being unattractive.
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    That's why it's not brute force anymore.
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