Source.

Programmers are the greatest browsing community (SO mostly)…We can singlehandedly save the planet.

Kenya Installs the First Solar Plant That Transforms Ocean Water Into Drinking Water, and It Could Be the Solution to the Global Lack of Water

Kenya installs the first solar plant that transforms ocean water into drinking water, and it could be the solution to the global lack of water:

FTA: “Kenya installs the first solar plant that transforms ocean water into drinking water, and it could be the solution to the global lack of water

The Earth is a watery place. In fact, 71 percent of our planet is covered in water [1]. Despite this, one in nine people do not have access to safe drinking water – that’s around 785 million people [2].

The trouble is, 96.5 percent of all Earth’s water is found in the oceans in the form of saline water, and is not drinkable for humans. That only leaves us with rivers, lakes, and groundwater to satisfy our water needs [1].

According to the World Economic Forum, the global water crisis ranks as the number four risk in terms of impact on society [3]. Let’s face it – humans need water to survive.

If you’re reading this from Canada or the United States, you may not understand this crisis on a personal level. After all, you can turn on a tap and have safe drinking water instantly start flowing from the faucet. This, however, is not the case for billions of people living on other continents. One NGO (Non-Government Organization) is trying to change that.

GivePower 

Give Power’s mission is to install solar energy technologies that will bring essential services to developing communities in need [4]. Their most recent break-through project installed a solar-powered desalination system to bring clean, healthy water to the people in Kiunga, a rural village in Kenya [4].

With this technology, the salty ocean water will now be a viable source of water for the people living in this village. The system is capable of producing about 70 thousand litres or drinkable water every day, which is enough for up to 35 thousand people [4].”

GivePower

Do note that they are not yet rated on Charity Navigator

i learned that Binghamton University researchers have been working on a self-healing concrete that uses a specific type of fungi as a healing agent. When the fungus is mixed with concrete, it lies dormant until cracks appear, when spores germinate, grow and precipitate calcium carbonate to heal the cracks (x)

Rising Seas Are Going to Drown Way More Cities Than We’d Thought: Study

In a low-warming scenario, we expected rising tides to cover areas currently occupied by 37 million people. The real number is closer to 150 million.

But none of the challenges posed by our warming climate has loomed larger in the popular imagination than sea-level rise. With global populations and wealth heavily concentrated in low-lying coastal cities, humanity has been preoccupied by the prospect of the oceans reclaiming the high points of our civilization. And for good reason: The best available models suggest that 37 million people currently live in places that will be below high tide by 2050 — in an optimistic low-carbon-emissions scenario.

Or rather, that’s what such models suggested before this week. On Tuesday, a new study revealed that those alarming statistics — which had gotten so many of us all worked up about our favorite cities’ impending doom — were wildly inaccurate.

The actual impacts of sea-level rise are going to be much, much worse.

Listen, folks, few understand the enormity of what is happening, nor how fast it’s occurring, and, look, I don’t count myself among those few. 

The rest of us do not realize the catastrophe that is happening right now. 

Maybe that’s not fair to say: the people of California probably understand all too well. Even if their home is not on fire, certainly they see the hellish red glow in the sky and cannot avoid the acrid smell of wildfire smoke.

For sure, the indigenous folk who subsist on whale meat understand the crisis, since the bowheads they hunt have not appeared. None of them. They are way out to sea, trying to avoid the warming oceans and underwater heat waves. 

The people of Key West, who have endured a “king tide” flooding their city streets for 60+ days straight, probably think there’s a big problem. Some of them, no doubt, are hanging on to the foolish belief that this tide is going to subside – it’s not – it’s rapid sea level rise. 

It’s not our fault though, that we do not know … did not know, because, everything we have been told, the stuff that has made it out of the media in the past decade or so, has all been based on these same “optimistic low-carbon-emissions scenarios.”

This is not the world we live in. We live in the high-emission catastrophic scenario. We were shown these, when we were shown anything at all, but we were told these catastrophic emission scenarios would never, ever – couldn’t possibly – ever be so. 

Yeah, well, we were wrong about.

TIL the “fresh is best” culture led consumers to wrongly see frozen produce as lower quality. It turns out frozen fruit & veg are equally nutritious. The freezing process slows nutrient loss which occurs after harvesting. Researchers found no real nutritional differences overall.

via reddit.com

Yes, climate change can be beaten by 2050. Here's how.

A carbon-free world can be a reality. What would that mean for our jobs, homes and lives?

“Is it possible to turn things around by 2050? The answer is absolutely yes,” says Kai Chan, a professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia.

Many scientists have been telling us how the world will look like, if we don’t act now. However, others, like Chan, are tracking what success might look like.

They are not simply day-dreamers either. They aren’t being too optimistic. They are putting together road maps for how to safely get to the planet envisioned in the 2015 Paris Agreement, where temperatures hold at 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than before we started burning fossil fuels, this article from July states.

“Three decades is enough to do a lot of important things. In the next few years—if we get started on them—they will pay dividends in the coming decades,” says Chan, the lead author of the chapter on achieving a sustainable future in a recent UN report that predicted the possible extinction of a million species.

Making these changes won’t mean years of being poor, cold and hungry before things get comfortable again, the scientists insist. They say that if we start acting seriously NOW, we stand a decent chance of transforming society without huge disruption. 

No doubt, it will take a massive switch in society’s energy use. But without us noticing, that’s already happening. Not fast enough, maybe, but it is. Solar panels and offshore wind power plummet in price.  Iceland and Paraguay have stripped the carbon from their grids, according to a new energy outlook report from Bloomberg. Europe is on track to be 90 per cent carbon-free by 2040. And Ottawa says that Canada is already at 81 per cent, thanks to hydro, nuclear, wind and solar. 

Decarbonizing the whole economy is within grasp. We can do this.

“If we have five years of really sustained efforts, making sure we reorient our businesses and our governments toward sustainability, then from that point on, this transition will seem quite seamless. Because it will just be this gradual reshaping of options,” Chan says, adding: “All these things seem very natural when the system is changing around you.”

Do y’all ever just get ANGRY about how cool technology is inevitably used for evil. Like, smart homes could be such an exciting concept?

Imagine: your home is entirely voice activated. You can run yourself a bath when you’re exhausted and sore without having to get up to turn the water on. You can alleviate your anxiety about having left the stove on without having to leave work. The roomba can find your glasses for you when you drop them and all you have to do is ask.

Now imagine that this is all on a closed circuit! Your TV can predict what shows you’ll like, but it won’t give that information to a company that will use it for disturbingly specific advertisement. And everything has manual overrides, just in case.

Can you imagine a future where every car is self-driving? Maybe even solar powered? Or better yet, apply those same concepts to widespread public transportation! We could almost completely eliminate traffic jams.

My house could feed my cats while I’m on vacation! My fridge could tell me when I’m low on milk! I could brew coffee without getting out of bed!

Hell, most of this stuff already exists!

But nooooo, I can’t have any of it because there are people and companies out there who will actively use that stuff against me and I don’t want fucking Amazon to know what kind of underwear I own.

I’m not bitter or anything.

the ideal of “farms everywhere in every garden!!1!” is a huge selling point of the solarpunk and self-sustainablity communities, especially with farmcore/cottagecore and nature aesthetics being more popular nowadays.

however these posts often overlook a few things

1) we already overproduce food, we don’t need more farms we need better farm and food management.

2) not everyone can farm or wants too. Space, the local environment, disabilities, and lack of interest needs to be acknowledged more. I’m awful with plants no matter how much i love them, and i am certain there are plenty more people who would agree.

3) the idea of farms for everyone and the aesthetic of “everyone having their little plot of land” is not community driven, and sadly comes from a place of colonialism. YES a cute lil cottage with a chicken pen out the back and a garden out the front is cute, but this is not possible for everyone on the planet.

4) NATURAL DIVERSITY IS VERY IMPORTANT. instead of making everyones garden into a food forest, we should aim to grow more native plants and help cultivate the natural environment.

5) not every country is the same, we have our own biodiveristy, and often these posts are *very* american/american based

Need to be mindful for our feathered friends!