#solarpunk

[reasonsforhope]

"Heat stored underground in caverns can be set aside in Finland’s summer months to be re-used during frigid winters thanks to a state-of-the-art ‘seasonal energy’ storage facility.

Slated for construction this summer near Helsinki, it will be the largest in the world by all standards and contain enough thermal energy to heat a medium-sized city all winter.

Thermal exchange heating systems, like those built underground, or domestic heat pumps, are seen as the most effective way available of reducing the climate-impact of home heating and cooling.

Their function relies on natural forces or energy recycling to cool down or heat up water and then using it to radiate hot or cold energy into a dwelling.

In Vantaa, Finland’s fourth largest city neighboring the capital of Helsinki, the ambitious Varanto seasonal energy storage project plans to store cheap and environmental friendly waste heat from datacenters, cooling processes, and waste-to-energy assets in underground caverns where it can be used to heat buildings via the district heating network whenever it is needed.

In Finland and other Nordic countries, the heat consumption varies significantly between seasons. Heat consumption in the summertime is only about one-tenth of the peak load consumption during the cold winter months.

Varanto will utilize underground caverns equal in space to two Maddison Square Gardens—over a million cubic meters—filled with water heated by this waste heat and pressure that will allow the water to reach temperatures of up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit without the water boiling or evaporating.

“The world is undergoing a huge energy transition. Wind and solar power have become vital technologies in the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy,” says Vantaa Energy CEO Jukka Toivonen.

“The biggest challenge of the energy transition so far has been the inability to store these intermittent forms of energy for later use. Unfortunately, small-scale storage solutions, such as batteries or accumulators, are not sufficient; large, industrial-scale storage solutions are needed. Varanto is an excellent example of this, and we are happy to set an example for the rest of the world.” ...

“Two 60-MW electric boilers will be built in conjunction with Varanto,” adds Toivonen. “These boilers will be used to produce heat from renewable electricity when electricity is abundant and cheap. Our heat-producing system will work like a hybrid car: alternating between electricity and other forms of production, depending on what is most advantageous and efficient at the time.”

... Construction of the storage facility’s entrance is expected to start in summer 2024, while it could be operational as early as 2028."

-via Good News Network, April 12, 2024. Video via VantaanEnergia, March 10, 2024

[auntieashleydark]

So You Want to be Solarpunk?

If your neighborhood has a vacant lot, get some neighbors together and turn it into a community garden.

Organize a block party.

Create a maker space enabling folks to repair, repurpose, and swap their old stuff.

Organize a bunch of plant-savvy neighbors to help folks convert their yards from resource hungry yuppie lawns into something sustainable that fits the local biome.

Get a few friends together and clean up the trash on the streets. Make sure to recycle.

Set up Little Free Libraries and Little Free Pantries.

Get tool-savvy neighbors together to help folks with needed household repairs and upgrades.

The punk in solarpunk is about resistance to the alienation and consumer culture that makes our communities unsustainable and our environments toxic.

[blakekathryn]

Solarpunk inspired studies ♡

[nestedneons]

By jilt with stablediffusion

Cyberpunk art commissions

Ko-Fi

My ai workflows

[femboycatofmystery]

Hey folks let me anti-doomscroll you for a quick second:

Batteries and Solar have been getting cheap very quickly for a long time now and not only is it not stopping, but even at the rates it's at the economics of energy are shifting rapidly. The costs of decarbonizing all forms of electric power are now more down to infrastructure and planning than bulk cost. Compare and contrast to the turn of the century when Solar was so prohibitively expensive that saying we'd meet any meaningful fraction of our needs with photovoltaics would have gotten you laughed out of the room.

Meanwhile, although there are lots of complicated moving parts and a surprising amount of gross politics attached, gas cars are now less good in most ways than electric. Again, at the turn of the century this would have sounded laughable.

Many industries have specific needs that prevent direct conversion to electric, but hydrocarbon fuels are not intrinsically fossil fuels and can be made as a storage medium for solar. Hydrocarbon fuels made in this way are intrinsically carbon neutral. The technology is relatively young, but from a basic math perspective looks very doable.

Inflation actually has more to do with the above than it does with whatever it is the federal reserve does, and pulling down a supply of energy from the sky that requires less infrastructure to get (which is true because that's why it's cheaper now) directly helps.

The current "business as usual" scenarios with global warming are lower than they used to be, because the solar transition is just sort of happening because of economics without a lot of government help. All of the above lower the amount of friction and pushback we face when trying to get the government to do something.

By the way, the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Joe Biden a couple years back, is explicitly designed to accelerate these trends.

As disastrous as the current projections for global warming are, it's important to keep two things in perspective: first, that they are exactly that, disasters, not the end-of-the-world kind but more sort of the hurricanes and floods kind, and second, while they certainly will get worse before they get better, they can and will get better. What we do now from a policy perspective has an outsize impact on how much flooding, droughts, and other weather-related costs we will face in the decades to come, but "human civilization ends" is not actually particularly likely. It is much more realistic to say "we could have a huge number of climate-related disasters or a moderately increased number, and every little bit of policy work helps move the needle".

We can and we will solve global warming, the question is not if but when, and how many lives can we save or improve by acting as soon as possible. Imagining this as an almost-certain death sentence for the future of humanity and nature is not merely unrealistic, but wildly counterproductive. It is paralyzing and enervating when what will do the most good is planning, policy, and communication.

Remember, despair is not a tool for positive change. Hope is the real language of revolution.

[site-remember]

https://regina-294.mxtkh.fun/ep/HPJveK0

[thrivingisthegoal]

I'm sure you may have seen a lot of "how to inoculate yourself against climate disinformation" posts, but we're experiencing a huge amount of content paid for by Fossil Fuel Interest's to put pressure on the internet. And it's been really concentrated for a few months.

The funding is pushing for a cultural shift for people who are undecided in the climate conversation and are possibly more easily swayed. And it's important to remember, fossil fuel interests wouldn't pay for it if they didn't need it.

Most of the disinfo looks like "yeah climate change is real but we can't possibly do anything to fix it" or "these solutions simply don't work." about solutions that are tried and true. They look a lot like nuanced takes, but specifically are trying to motivate inaction.

So if you wake up today and ask "what can I do today that makes a difference?" is honestly post a lot to tip the scales regarding the presentation climate solutions. Silly or serious, for example posting about renewables getting you excited, community food forests that are feeding people, cool solutions to targeting methane, etc. Post about a climate book or show you liked, or whatever. Just make sure it's clear to an onlooker that there are people who believe climate change is anthropogenic, it was mostly caused by extractive practices and fossil fuel use, and that we can still demand rapid action to fix it. And all of this is true, because the science supports it.

[alpaca-clouds]

Solarpunk and the Third Place

Let's talk about third places. It is a topic that has been brought up in a lot of Solarpunk and leftwing places have brought up during the last few months. Andrewism has made a video on it for example. And given that during the last few weeks I actually made a lot of use of third places, I thought I also could talk a bit more about it.

See, I have spoken about this: Due to my roommate just being very hard to live with right now, I kinda fled my home. (Which yes, is due to her mental health, but that does not make it any better for me.) And basically I just looked into: Where the hell could I spend my time?

And then I remembered the thing that I did throughout my youth: Hang out at gaming stores and, well, play games. I did that a lot for so long, given it is often a place for nerds to gather. And yeah, what can I say? It still works.

Heck, I found even someone who plays Digimon Cards with me.

But of course we do know - again it has been discussed a lot - that in recent times a lot of third places have either been erased, or the way we live have stopped the third places to work the way they used to work like this.

Let's quickly go over what a third place is: A third place is a place where you can hang out and get to know people. A place distinct from the place you live and the place you work in (or school, for students). Stuff like a park, a café, a library... things like that. Places that encourage you to interact with new people and start conversations.

Recently those places have been destroyed a lot. Partly because a lot of them have become hard to afford (especially on a regular basis), partly because they have become shut down, and partly because our culture actually does no longer encourage interacting with strangers.

And, I mean. Yeah. Parks are counted among third places, but honestly, I cannot remember that I actually interacted with a stranger in a park. If a stranger talks to me, I am afraid they are a creep. And if I see someone I think I could get along with, I do not dare to talk to them.

The fact that most of us run around glued to our electric devices (I am counting myself there as well) does not help this fact, right? If I am sitting in a café, I am usually working on my laptop, which will make it less likely that folks interact with me. And, of course, my autistic self will also not do that in turn.

Solarpunk both as a genre and a vision for the future is very much build around the idea of community and working together as a community. And for that we need third places in Solarpunk futures. Places that are easily accessible and that people can just go to to talk to people.

But more than that, Solarpunk also needs a society and social rules that actually allow for folks to interact with each other, talk to each other and ask each other for help and stuff.

Sure, there also need to be safe and silent spaces for people with needs like that (including autistic folks like me). And really... Frankly, I would not know how to talk with someone outside a nerd context, lol.

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

For my dad's birthday, he's been hinting he wants a windturbine. I went ahead and got him one, and reading that painting them will reduce bird colisions, stencil spray painted it to look like the st louis flag (city he's repairing). I have a feeling he'll like it.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Kindness to kids is not inherently punk but it's an essential part of it because 1.How else do you think they get radicalized and how they're treated by adult punks who they spend time with regularly? and 2.Child abuse can be part of a fascism by grooming kids in it's ideology,including standard ones like antiblackness,and children face the brunt of fascism more than any adult soldier does.Maybe you all should make less posts about fandom not being activism and experience curation and more on how kids can keep themselves safe irl and online and learn about black and queer revolutionaries instead only dead white guys and join actual movements you can

[ahedderick]

Foraging

Monday I picked dandelions and violets to experiment with flower-flavored syrups. It was time-consuming, but I just felt like trying something new. I have done violet jelly before, although the results were mediocre.

The first step after separating the petals from the greens was to pour boiling water over each kind and let them sit for a day. The violets had a greenish-blue extract by evening, and by morning it had settled into a deep blue. I tried adding a couple of drops of lemon juice, which shifted it to blue-purple. Violets have the same pigment, anthocyanin, as red cabbage, and it is pH sensitive. I am curious why my tap water (from a well) would have a pH of 9(ish), but I'll go ahead and blame limestone.

I cooked the dandelion first, adding sugar equal to the amount of liquid (1.25 cups). I cooked it for a while and then bottled it when it seemed like it had thickened up (the bubbles start to PLOP instead of 'pop', if that makes sense).

Here it is, compared with honey. The color is virtually the same!

Then I started with the violet. As I heated it, the color shifted BACK to greenish-blue. I added a little more lemon juice, and it ended up weirdly purple from some angles and blue from others, depending on how the light hit it. It's also DARK, too dark for me to photograph and show you much color. When it cooled down it a) turned a steely blue-grey and b) crystalized.

That. that is NOT what I was going for. It also doesn't really taste like anything. Just 'sweet'. Drat.

[southernsolarpunk]

Original

[prole-log]

[hes-a-plant]

Bro, you ok? Bro, humans aren’t separate from the ecosystems around us. We’re a part of them, bro. Bro, we’re never going to have absolutely zero effect on ecosystems, because we live here, bro. Bro, I never said it had to be a bad effect. We don’t have to immediately be perfect either, bro, sometimes doing what you can is what you can, and its way better than nothing. Bro what do you mean humans are a plague. You’re starting to sound a bit like an ecofascist, bro… Bro?

[the-bramble--patch]

You know how companies used to make flour sacks with pretty flower patterns on them because mothers would make dresses out of them for their daughters? We should bring that back. Paper bags designed to be reused as wrapping paper. Jars of jam designed to look nice filled with pencils or homemade sauces. Fabric that's high quality enough to use as a patch.

Give things a second life!!