• Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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    1 year ago

    I’ll take the issue down the road over the one already in my doorstep any time of the week.

    Atmospheric pollution is at least something that seems fixable with extraterrestrial resources. Ruined biospheres due to mining on earth seems less avoidable/fixable unless we go back to pre-industrial living standards.

    • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      How would it be fixable? The more stuff entering and exiting the atmosphere, the more particles. The particles aren’t from manufacturing on earth from what I read.

      • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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        1 year ago

        Particles we can bind with chemical reactions (like ad-blu for diesel engines), would be expensive and we would need to be careful to select chemical reactions that actually solve the problem but fundamentally it’s a fixable problem.

        • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Right, so by adding more chemicals, causing more unknown issues, we can fix an unknown issue. Which we would need to strip earth for even more to get to be able to use.

          Makes total sense!

          • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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            1 year ago

            Adding chemicals to reduce pollution is how every internal combustion engine works, especially diesel engines.

            Sodium reacts explosively with water, Chlorine is a lethal substance to humans yet when the two chemicals react they become a necessary part for our bodies. There are ways to turn toxic/harmful materials into harmless ones by adding more chemicals. The key part is making sure the result is actually harmless, which we can.

            Edit: also in how far would we need to strip earth further for this solution? In this scenario we’re already mining asteroids in space and there are (to my knowledge) no natural materials we can find only on earth, if anything there is stuff we can’t find on earth but do in abundance in space (like Helium).

            • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Just because it can reduce pollution in a combustion engine doesn’t mean it translates to removing metal particulates from the atmosphere. Those are wholefully different scenarios.

              We still barely comprehend the dangers of what we put in the atmosphere 3 decades ago, let’s not be adding more. Especially so when it’s completely unproven to this date.

              You claim it’s a fixable problem, yet there is no proven method. And how could there be, we just found out about this issue this bloody week lmfao.

              • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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                1 year ago

                a fixable problem

                it is though. We haven’t found a solution, we haven’t even started looking for one but it is fixable. There is nothing in the known laws of physics/chemistry inhibiting us from removing these particles from the atmosphere.

                You claim removing particles from the atmosphere is completely different from removing them from exhaust gas. It isn’t. The only differences here is that we need to filter the stuff in a less than accessible location. Chemistry doesn’t suddenly stop working because we are in the atmosphere and not on ground level.

                And we can figure out how that stuff is impacting the atmosphere, we simply haven’t bothered running the numbers and experiments on it because there’s no funding for it. This isn’t some weird black magic nobody can/has figured out. What do you think the scientists will do with the newly acquired info on added particles into the atmosphere? Look at it and hum and hah? No they’ll use the numbers to model long term impacts these materials will have and, if paid enough, even figure out ways to remove them again.

                • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Fixable means that it doesn’t create another issue, which there is plenty of supporting evidence it would. We don’t even understand the future issues of removing the pollutants from ICE vehicles.

                  And yes it’s different, the particles they need to removes is different and chemistry is different when you lose atmosphere.

                  Hell water boils at a certain altitude, and you want to claim all chemical reactions would be the same…? Come on dude.

                  • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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                    1 year ago

                    By your definition nothing is ever fixable because you can’t ever fully remove the possibility that your choices have some unknown effect. A perfect solution never exists so looking for one is idiotic, we can only model the problem with our current knowledge and work on fixing it with that. Compared to other animal life I say we’re even doing a good job at it, so far we haven’t gone extinct despite being the predominant life form pretty much everywhere. Other animals would’ve ran into major problems sustaining themselves within two or three generations were they in our position. So unless you have some way to solve our problems that doesn’t involve regressing back to the stone age I think the “fix it now, worry about the new ways we broke it later” approach is the only workable solution we have on hand right now.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      How. Ruined biosphere from mining affects many discrete places that can be cleaned up, in theory. Messing up the atmosphere affects all biospheres, is much more vast, and we have to breathe in the meantime

      Look at current mining - true crimes against the environment in specific places but do not directly impact most humans. Could you say that about messing up the atmosphere?

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Isn’t one of the current hot topics among environmentalists carbon capture, which is “cleaning up” the atmosphere as a whole?

        • shottymcb@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          The only thing carbon capture cleans up is CO2, and it’s not remotely feasible because it would require orders of magnitude more energy than the entire planet consumes even if it were 100% efficient, which it isn’t close to being.