Human-made materials – the “technosphere” – are a deep store of fossil carbon – and possibly a ticking time bomb.
That’s according to a fascinating new study published in Cell Reports Sustainability.
“We have no idea of how much carbon has been accumulated in the technosphere, how long it stays and what might happen to it once it is released,” says co-author Professor Klaus Hubaeck, a researcher at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
The researchers found that the technosphere accumulated 8.4 billion tonnes of fossil carbon from 1995-2019.
Were all this carbon to be burned and sent into the atmosphere, it would be equivalent to 30 billion tonnes of CO2. The world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere over that period were roughly 770 billion tonnes.
“Carbon is used as a feedstock everywhere in our daily items, even the laptop I type on, and we were wondering if there is a potential time bomb of all that carbon contributing further to climate heating as it gets released to the atmosphere,” Hubaeck tells Cosmos over email.
Human-made materials are often made from fossil carbon sources like oil and gas. Plastics, for instance, are 74% fossil carbon on average. When these items reach end of life, the carbon makes its way back into the environment via dumping – or into the atmosphere via combustion.
The researchers calculated the amount of fossil carbon stored in the technosphere in the year 2011, using economic data to judge how much was flowing in and out of various industries.
They found that most of this carbon was going into rubber and plastic (30%), while 24% was put in bitumen, and 16% in machinery and equipment.
They found that 9% of extracted fossil carbon was stored in the technosphere in 2011, or about 0.4 billion tonnes of fossil carbon.
The team extrapolated these findings to a 25-year time period (1995-2019), which told them that 8.4 billion tonnes of fossil carbon had been accumulated.
Hubaeck says that the technosphere is nearing the stage where it stores more carbon than the natural world.
“We are not far from that turning point. Indeed, the accumulated fossil carbon is in the same order of magnitude, and indeed already higher than that stored in animals.”
What happens to all of this carbon? The researchers estimate that 3.7 billion tonnes of fossil carbon was disposed of over this time period: 1.2 billion tonnes sent to landfill, 1.2 billion tonnes incinerated and sent into the atmosphere, 1.1 billion tonnes recycled, and the rest littered.
“On the one hand, you can consider it as a form of carbon sequestration if this fossil carbon ends up sequestered in landfill, but on the other hand, it poses an environmental hazard, and if you burn it, you increase carbon emissions,” says co-author Dr Franco Ruzzenenti, also from the University of Groningen.
This means it is very important to make sure the waste is being processed properly, according to the researchers. They say that product lifetimes and recycling rates need to increase, and landfill and waste discharges need to be minimised.
“It’s best to avoid or reduce the throughput in the first place,” says Hubaeck.
“Certainly in rich countries, we have too much stuff (whereas the Global South still needs to catch up), we should question the amount of durable products and (inefficient) infrastructure we produce.
“Shifting to bio-based carbon also has environmental impacts, land requirements, biodiversity, and impacts on food prices.”
The researchers say that circular economy strategies are important for reducing the amount of waste as well, alongside managing waste better after disposal.
make a post about the noshies. I have a few minutes, so lets see if I can do it.
The other day, I exchanged treats with another good friend-we’ve been exchanging gifts family to family for 31 years. Sometimes crafty things, sometimes foodstuff treats, sometimes seasonal decorations, whatever. We don’t decide ahead of time, we just do what we feel. The past few years, we are older, of course, and it’s been foodstuffs because it’s easy to just make extra of what we’re making for our own households, then give it away. This year, I made up the afore-mentioned peppermint bark and snickerdoodles, and did up some candy-cane-dusted chocolate covered pretzels. I took photos:
The one on the left hand side is what we received, and holycowthisisaddictive. The photo on the right shows our gift with the lid on, and the snickerdoodles I shared; we have a few left over. Our gifts to give are packed up in boxes similar to the one we received. I’m sorry about no bark photo; every morsel of it is given away. It was dark chocolate, crushed candycanes, white “chocolate” layered on top, with more candy cane dust. Pretzels are pretzels.
OK, so. Yesterday I mentioned I ate a donut. The day before, I put a hurt (for me, anyway,) on the snack mix we received. I’m a nosher, and usually keep fresh veggies around so that when I’ve got enough calories, I can still nosh. I read the best thing in Yoga Journal one time: vegetables do not make a person fat. It’s the truth. Better for us raw, but even cooked, if it’s only veggies-no dip, cheese, butter, etc.-you can eat what you like, and they don’t make you fat. And as to dip, salsa is permissible, because, again, it’s vegetables. Raw carrots are delicious dipped in salsa, but likely as I did, you’ll have to find out by trying it, because I didn’t believe it, either. Anyway, I’m not including potatoes or corn as veggies; I mean veggies a person would eat raw. The thing is, they have lots of water along with all the wonderful nutrients, and even if a person eats a whole bag of carrots or bell peppers or turnips or celery, etc., it won’t make them fat. It would also take a long, long time. I read all this back then in a magazine I trust. Most people won’t eat that much at a time, and will lose their naughty craving well before they’ve polished off all the little carrots.
Well, I needed a nosh, went for the carrots and saw I’d picked up a package of a blend of various lettuces and spinach, and thought, cool! Chips. So, I spread out a cup (1 serving is a cup, fwiw. It fits on my sheet) and sprinkled a bit of water, then seasoned the leaves while I was waiting for the oven to heat to 375.
The photo on the right hand shows the raw leaves, and the seasoning I used. I like salt-free seasoning; veggies have flavor on their own that I enjoy plus plenty of sodium, but chips need a little oomph. This time it was Florida Hope Seasoned Pepper (which really needs to be in everything savory,) and a garlic salt called Justice that has shallots, garlic, onion, green peppercorns, chives, and green onion, but No Salt. It has the salty texture, though. It’s awesome on popcorn.
The photo on the lefthand is of the chips when I took them out of the oven (375 degrees, 15 minutes. Ovens will vary.) They are light, crispy, will not dip, but really solve that chips craving a person might get. And even with the water roasted out, you can eat as many of these as you can, and not get fat.
Well, time to see how this looks, and get it put up. I hope everyone has some fun exploring what they like to do to avoid overeating the delicious rich treats we have this time of year. And I hope Scottie maybe finds this a way he can get a little more nutrition in when he loses his appetite!
I need a tagline, the way Julia and Lidia have taglines. But I can’t steal those, of course. So, here’s to a great afternoon. Also, to anyone who’s made kale chips: this mixture does not contain kale, so the aroma kale produces turning into chips will not be present. Yay!
and just got home. I decided to eat one of the donuts I bought while out (there was a sale! As the shoppe will be closed until 1/5. Yay…) Anyway, the 1st page I open online every day is the NASA APOD, and here is what they put up today. Such a wonderful thing to see when I sit down to break my fast with a forbidden food and tea!! and relax a little reading blogs. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
(I don’t get why WP won’t accept these photos. I thought it was my puter, but I have a new one, and the pic is still not here. It’s a quick click, and a really nice page today, so please go see it. After all, SPACE-X’s photos are likely to be poor, if they even do this for us.)
Yesterday, 37 Democratic Senators voted to pass the anti-trans NDAA.Those same Dems refused to allow Senator Baldwin to advance an amendment to remove anti-trans provisions from the bill.EITM has released an easy to read list of Senators who voted for it.Subscribe to support our journalism.
This follows the Queensland and French reviews into care that found care to be safe and effective. The Cass Review was a political hatchet job. Guarantee the NYT and US media doesn't cover this.
In 2024, several New Hampshire Democrats, afraid that anti-trans attacks would work, voted in favor of a trans surgery ban and bathroom bill.They lost more seats than most other states. Now the R majority is ramping up targeting us.Capitulation didn't work.National Dems, take note.
There is no joy in taking health insurance coverage away from any of our constituents, including trans children of active duty service members here in Virginia.You can’t support our troops by making it harder for families to afford medically necessary health care prescribed by their doctors.
The result of puberty blocker bans means trans youth are just skipping to grey market hormones, not managed by a healthcare provider. So the result of bans is care that is not managed and worse for everyone involved. This is why gatekeeping doesn't work. People will get access anyways.
The only thing you do is make it less safe for trans people. Trans teens taking grey market hormones has been a thing for decades and had been declining until bans started kicking in. You'd think these idiots would learn that prohibitions never actually stops anything, you just make it less visible.
Rand Paul becomes the first to call for Elon Musk to replace Mike Johnson as Speaker. Which, if you listened to my podcast Uncovered yesterday, you already knew was going to happen before it just happened.
Mitch McConnell ran a playbook of total opposition after the 2008 election and it resulted in Republicans flipping 6 senate seats and 63 house seats two years after the biggest Dem victory since LBJwhat the fuck are you people doing
I don't think we're prepared for just how stupid things are about to get. The dumbest people on earth high on conspiracy theories will be making policy decisions like pandemic response based on disinformation from twitter.
"2025 Will Be the Year of Trump's Crackdown on Islam"What Trump’s hawkish anti-Muslim appointees mean for the Middle East – and beyond, writes @attackerman.bsky.social for @zeteo.com
Jeffries: That bipartisan agreement has now been detonated because House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt the very working-class Americans that many of them pretend to want to help
This is why police unions are not real unions and no one should view them as such. They exist to protect power and property. That's it. There's no solidarity to be found there.
has only good news for my body and for my mind, she warms them and she becalms them unlike her greek namesake who left her listeners terrified and tense ah the onomastic turnaround took twenty centuries to turn the older story on its head which explains ex-lingua why my modern body feels comfort in the new diachronic goddess
And how long is this ‘masculinity crisis’ going to last?Read on Substack
by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Last week, I watched Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story on Peacock, which, unsurprisingly, was fairly disturbing on a number of levels, starting with the fact that most people at the time thought “getting young women extremely drunk and then convincing them to take their tops off on camera” was a fairly normal, “boys will be boys!” thing to do.
The thing that really struck me, though, was the fact that it remained “normal” until about 2011, when creator Joe Francis was arrested for false imprisonment and assault, after he brought three women home after a night out and refused to let them leave, ultimately attacking one of them and bashing her head into the floor. Francis had long been Public Enemy #1 for feminists (along with, on the other end of the spectrum, the Christian patriarchs who fake-married their daughters at Purity Balls), but at that point, no one was really paying any attention to us.
The reason I bring this up, the reason it struck me, is because I don’t think I really realized until just then what an incredibly short time period it was between the end of that era — this era where bro culture was celebrated, where rape culture was celebrated, where women’s sexuality was a thing within their control whichever way they chose to control it, in which beautiful female celebrities were excoriated for being a size four in public — and the era we are now in.
Because we hear a lot about it from their end, right? The story, as they tell it, is that there were all these ostensibly “liberal” men who “voted for Obama,” but then the Left “just went too far” and drove them into the loving, misogynistic arms of Andrew Tate and Donald Trump. And now they’re lonely and they don’t know how to be men and it is a full-on crisis! A crisis I tell you! And an epidemic!
The way they talk, you would think that they had been forced to live in this horrible matriarchal world for years, during where they weren’t allowed any free speech, were constantly accused of rapes they didn’t commit, were told constantly by everyone that they were garbage and that they had to apologize for being born male.
But let’s piece together this timeline, shall we?
2011: Joe Francis arrested, “Entourage” ends.
2012: During a stand-up set, comedian Daniel Tosh starts talking about how rape jokes are “always” funny — causing a woman in the audience to yell, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”, to which he responds, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, five guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her?”
— Also, Tucker Max, who was celebrated for having written a book called I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, in which he tells multiple stories of having sex with extremely intoxicated women, “retires” from being Tucker Max.
2013: We have the rape joke discourse, led by then-Jezebel writer Lindy West. On the one hand, you have feminists saying “This shit isn’t actually funny,” and on the other, approximately 87 million op-eds about how we must protect the sanctity of rape jokes.
— The campus rape discourse begins. Women who have been raped on campus discuss both the problem of rape on campus and the tendency of school officials to do nothing about it, asking people to take it more seriously and criticizing men who have sex with women when they are too intoxicated to consent. This is followed by years of people complaining that we can’t take these women seriously, because what if they are just having day-after regrets because the man didn’t send them flowers or call them back or something?
2014: In May, incel Elliot Rodger kills six people because he is angry that women won’t have sex with him.
— In August, Gamergate begins — starting out as a rage against progressive videogame developer Zoë Quinn from gamers who believe that she only got good reviews for a game she made that they didn’t like because she had a sexual relationship with a video game reviewer (who never actually reviewed her game). It turns into unfettered rage and harassment against women who dare to criticize games for being misogynistic, and then against all “Social Justice Warriors” in general.
— We have the street harassment discourse, started by Black women on social media, in which women publicly discussed the general unpleasantness of not being able to walk to the grocery store without some guy yelling “Nice tits!” at us. This is quickly followed by approximately 87 million “How are men even supposed to talk to women if they can’t yell at them while they walk down the street?” and “But it’s a compliment!” and “I’m a woman and it makes me feel pretty when men I don’t know compliment my ass!” op-eds.
— The height of the affirmative consent discourse, in which people discuss why it’s important to have affirmative and enthusiastic consent at each stage of sexual activity. Some states implement “Yes Means Yes” laws — so that, instead of asking campus rape victims whether they were clear enough that they did not want to have sex with someone, accused rapists will be asked how they obtained consent, This was, naturally, followed by lots of complaining that it will ruin sex.
2015: Donald Trump begins his presidential campaign, ultimately winning in part due to a backlash to “social justice” activism — feminist activism and rape culture discourse in particular.
So let’s just stop there for now. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, because I know we had a few more discourses and we certainly had a lot more incel mass murders. But it doesn’t need to be, because the main thing I want to point out is that, at the very most, we had a few years of public discussions of things women had grown real fucking sick of, each of which was swiftly followed by an inevitable “Has feminism gone too far?!?” backlash from those who thought everything was fine the way it was and had been — mostly from those with bigger platforms and more power than we ever had.
This, frankly, has been the case for all social justice movements that have occurred over the last few years — not just feminism and rape culture, but also racism, police brutality and trans rights. You see a groundswell of actual people talking about their experiences and how best to change things so that other people don’t have to go through them, and a swift and terrible backlash from those who say they would like those other people to shut up, please.
Donald Trump was elected again this year, and again we were all told “This is all because you all just went too far! They just couldn’t take it anymore!”
But like, in the end, what did they have to take? People talking publicly on social media? People making art, movies, television shows, music, video games, etc. that they don’t like? Or publicly criticizing things they do like or behavior they enjoy engaging in?
That’s nothing. Especially when compared to everything that everyone else was expected to go through and shut up about. I’d like to point out that, quite notably, taking rape more seriously did not lead to any epidemic of men being sent to prison for not sending flowers or calling the day after.
One of the most jarring points of the “Girls Gone Wild” documentary is one in which a girl recounts how she ended up in a video when she was 17 years old (making it, legally, child pornography), and one of the male teachers at her high school responded by asking her to autograph a copy for him. That’s just one moment, one small snapshot of what was meant to be acceptable back then.
And, you know, at no point did anyone back then publicly wonder or wring their hands about “Is the patriarchy going too far?” Rather, then, as now, most public discussion was about what was wrong with the girls who were doing this, not the men who produced it.
It’s not at all surprising to me that men living in that social environment felt “safe” voting for Barack Obama, or felt like they were totally liberal because they wanted to legalize weed and didn’t care if people were gay or not. Because they could vote for Obama and feel like a good liberal while chanting “Iron my shirt!” at Hillary Clinton. Everything was going really well for them and no one was really challenging the status quo, at least not anyone they were paying any attention to. This is part of what they mean when they say “the Left left me!”
(And, again, that’s just the feminist side of it. They were also “totally fine” with Black people until Black people started bringing up police brutality and racism, and fine with LGBTQ+ people when they thought that civil rights push would end with marriage.)
We’re being punished right now for a feminist utopia we never even had. We went straight from the Girls Gone Wild Era to the Gamergate/Incel mass murder era to the the Trump era. And while a whole lot has changed in terms of what we are willing to put up with or be quiet about, the only thing that has actually changed about the patriarchy has been the flavor it takes on.
December 15, 1791 The Bill of Rights became law when Virginia ratified the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. Read The Bill of Rights The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (emphasis mine -A. It’s an important site these days!)
December 15, 1930 Albert Einstein, 1930 Albert Einstein urged militant pacifism and the creation of an international war resistance fund. Einstein stated in New York that if two percent of those called for military service were to refuse to fight, and were to urge peaceful means of settling international conflicts, then governments would become powerless since they could not imprison that many people. He struggled against compulsory military service and urged international protection of conscientious objectors. He concluded that peace, freedom for individuals, and security for societies depended on disarmament; otherwise, “slavery of the individual and the annihilation of civilization threaten us.” Einstein on Peace and World Government
December 15, 1946 Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh sent a note to French Premier Leon Blum congratulating him for his selection as French Premier and asking for peace talks. France had exercised colonial power over the Vietnamese as part of French Indochina, formed in October 1887 from the provinces of Annam, Tonkin, Cochin China, and the Kingdom of Cambodia; Laos was added in 1893. Vietnamese nationalists, however, had demanded independence for the three provinces at the end of World War II.
December 15, 1973 The American Psychiatric Association reversed its long-standing position and declared that homosexuality is not a mental illness and “…deplores all public and private discrimination in such areas as employment, housing, public accommodation…” Read the APA policy on discrimination against [gays]
December 15, 2000 The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was shut down 14 years after becoming the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident ever. Nearly nine tons of radioactive material – dozens of times as much as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – were released in the explosion. The radioactive fallout affected 23% of Belarus, with 4.8% of Ukrainian territory and 0.5% of Russia. The Belarussian government spends 30% of its annual budget dealing with the aftermath of Chernobyl.
