They missed “environmental catastrophe unrelated to climate change that is getting ignored because it’s unrelated to climate change”
Soil depletion, micro plastics, habitat loss, fertilizer runoff, invasive species, heavy metal contamination, light pollution, etc etc. Yes climate change is a big fucking problem, but if it were to magically get resolved overnight we’d still wake up to a mountain of other human-created environmental issues. But because everyone is so focused on climate change specifically, we’re standing still (or even moving backward) on other issues. For example: electric cars are heralded as an environmental solution, but they: still require a lot of mining and resource extraction, still pollute through tire and brakepad wear, still produce a mountain of waste at the end of their lifespan, still use asphalt roads that require salting in winter, and still promote poor land use that creates all kinds of domino-effect problems (environmental and otherwise). Similarly hydroelectric is promoted as a sustainable energy source, but they wreak absolute havoc on river ecosystems.
Sure some habitat loss is due directly or indirectly to climate change, like polar bears, seals, and penguins losing the ice they need to breed and/or feed. But other instances are completely unrelated. For example, monarch butterflies in North America have experienced huge decreases in population due to an increase in herbicide use that destroyed massive numbers of milkweed plants, the only plant they lay eggs on, as well as destruction of the trees the monarchs over winter on in Mexico (eg through clear-cutting for avocado farms). Climate change has also hurt monarchs in various ways, but the specific issue of monarch habitat loss is generally unrelated.
Most engines are less than 30% efficient at producing movement. The majority of the energy is lost as heat.
Thermodynamics tells us that pretty much all energy ends up as heat. In a closed system, any device that uses energy is 100% efficient at making heat. A 1000W computer will make exactly as much heat as a 1000W heater.
A 100% efficient engine can only exist if the desired output is heat, thus making it a pretty useless engine. Also, in a closed system, the exhaust cannot leave.
But even a furnace/fireplace is subject to incomplete combustion, where some portion of the wood is transformed into byproducts that rob some of the energy of the fire. There's actually a big difference in the amount of energy you can get out of a fire, depending on the type of stove that's used.
That's some of what NGOs have tried to do for developing countries - find cheap and easily produceabke stove designs that can reduce the amount of wood needed and improve air quality in the home.
There’s no such thing as a 100% efficient “engine”. But in this case, since the waste heat is put to use (heating the house), OP thinks there’s a loophole.
But, house would also need to be soundproof. Any noise leaking to the outside is lost energy.
My lab used bottle caps with four holes in them for mobile phase intake. I’ve never seen a single bottle used for more than a couple HPLCs, but I suppose there are niche use cases out there.
The joke is that the British have an incredibly problematic history literally centuries-old of taking things from other cultures and going “well, it’s ours the world’s now.“ Many of these communities have been asking them literally for decades to return them, but they simply won’t even to this day.
There was a time where they could maybe make the claim “this is the best way to preserve them,“ but for the vast majority of cases that time has long since passed and it was flimsy to begin with.
It's mostly due to early "archeologists" being almost entirely trust fund babies born into the aristocracy and to whom it was a contest to make the craziest claims possible.
See the OG trench at Troy that went completely past the end of the Bronze Age and dumped all of the important artifacts into a refuse pile that is apparently still being sifted through today.
Also see early "paleontologists" who seemed to use Dino bones in an attempt to make monsters scary enough to make kids cry.
The sheer amount of mummies they have on display at the British Museum genuinely made me uncomfortable. Walking through those exhibits, the main thought in my head was just “hey, you guys think you should put some of these back?”
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