Point: “Big, global problems need big, global solutions. Big solutions spread fast, to lots of people: that is scalability. So scalability is a requirement for any solution that seeks to solve big problems.” Counterpoint: “Big, global solutions proposed are often ineffective, unfeasible, or counterproductive, because people and places are different. Any long-term solution is adapted… Continue reading Stop Asking if It Scales
Category: Technology
What’s the Plan for Plastic? (Pt. I)
I’m excited to share the first part of a deep dive I’ve been working on for the past two months (hence the lack of #content lately). Enjoy! The ubiquity of plastic is hard to overstate. You might wake up, squeeze some toothpaste out of a polyethylene tube onto the nylon bristles of a polypropylene toothbrush,… Continue reading What’s the Plan for Plastic? (Pt. I)
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The State of Energy in Five Graphs
I think it’s important to know some basic facts about energy. Here are the five favorite figures I’ve collected for this, some made by me. 1: Global primary energy consumption by source[1] World energy consumption has increased dramatically in recent history, a trend that’s more exponential than linear. There’s an ~800% increase since 1950, mainly… Continue reading The State of Energy in Five Graphs
Hydrogen Energy Explainer
My research involves hydrogen, so by now I’ve given a spiel explaining the whole point of hydrogen a couple times. I’ve had to explain it to myself too: at the start of my research, I made a PowerPoint to organize all the basic facts for myself. This is a written-up version of that, intended as… Continue reading Hydrogen Energy Explainer
Haber & Bosch: Heroes or Not?
The Haber-Bosch process is perhaps one of the most widely known industrial chemical processes. I won’t describe the history in too much detail (there’s Wikipedia for that), but in a nutshell, it’s a chemical process for making ammonia (NH3) from nitrogen (N2) and hydrogen (H2) invented in 1909. N2 + 3H2 → 2NH3 This doesn’t… Continue reading Haber & Bosch: Heroes or Not?
evoiding 