Climate Change Unicorns

David Trammel's picture

I always keep an eye out for articles on cutting edge technology that people think might be a fix for climate change (aka "unicorns") if just to catch an idea for a story or two.

https://singularityhub.com/2018/11/05/y-combinators-search-for-a-climate-change-unicorn/#sm.0000b2c5nur3leydtld1abey8jpbx

"Silicon Valley’s premier tech incubator, Y Combinator, has decided to take on climate change. They’ve put out a call for proposals for technology that can suck CO2 from the air in the hope of reversing our seemingly inexorable march towards a catastrophic 2°C increase in global temperatures.

An incubator that became famous for spawning internet-based unicorns like AirBnB, DropBox, and Stripe is not the most obvious vehicle for supporting next-generation geoengineering approaches. But with sluggish action on climate change, they’ve decided to bring Silicon Valley’s disruptive potential to bear on carbon sequestration technology."

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Most if not all of the ideas are what Greer called "subsidy dumpsters", that is ideas for businesses that can only work if given massive funds from the government. I wonder for each AirBnB that they create, how many failed companies get a bit of money and then bust.

Like someone over weight and in ill health, we know what to do. Simple things like eating more nutriently and eating less, with exercise. For climate change its the same thing.

Still, the idea of flooding the Sahara Desert with water (where do we get that much fresh water?) and covering it with alge makes for one heck of a story plot.

Gadgets for the Climate Hellscape

What will climate adaptation look like? A million individual products, each precisely targeted on social media to the intersection of a consumer culture and a catastrophe.

"As the red sun hung in the smoke-filled air outside, as the exhaust from the Camp Fire swept over the Bay Area, I was inside, looking at my phone, like everyone else. I was dying to go running, but the air quality index numbers, and my own eyes and lungs, told me that I shouldn’t. So I was scrolling Instagram when it served me an ad for Vent Performance Filtration Breathing Trainer, from the company Training Mask—tagline: 'Breathe Free, Breathe Strong.'

"The mask looks like a cross between an S&M accessory and military kit, technical meets. The ad for it explicitly linked the wildfires with working out; It could save my lungs from the global warming-induced, record-setting California fire season—and in 'performance filtration mode' it could train my respiratory muscles at the same time. It’s personal environmental gear with a fitspo bonus, the perfect gadget for the climate hellscape."

Sophie, you should have seen the link backs and marketing trackers inside of the code of the urls to the links you accidentally copied, when you posted this.

Its free of trackers now, lol.

David Trammel's picture
David Trammel's picture

"Like someone over weight and in ill health, we know what to do. Simple things like eating more nutriently and eating less, with exercise. For climate change its the same thing."

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/forests-technology-stop-climat...

Here's a follow on article about the proven method of carbon capture, the simple idea of protecting and expanding the World's forests.

Regreening our cities would have the added effect of cooling us during the Summer as well.

David Trammel's picture

Here is an interactive article that looks at how your local city's temperature will change in 2050

https://www.vox.com/a/weather-climate-change-us-cities-global-warming