Carbon & Emissions — Posts

25 posts on "Carbon & Emissions" by Shlomo Strauss — bilingual writing on technology, science, and business.

• The biology of forest recovery after severe wildfires — Specialized fungi and fire-adapted plants use the heat and smoke of wildfires to trigger rapid ecological regeneration in scorched forests.
• Beyond Food: How Soybeans Power Jet Engines and Plastics — Beyond agriculture, soybeans possess unique biological properties driving innovations in jet fuel, winter tires, and safer plastics.
• The Technologies Turning Carbon Into a Profitable Industry — New technologies are turning carbon capture from a costly necessity into a profitable industry by using emissions to create resources like concrete.
• Walmart proves 3D-printed construction is commercially viable — Walmart's new 3D-printed warehouses prove that robotic concrete printing is now a faster, cost-effective alternative to traditional construction.
• How data center water use compares to the beef industry — A breakdown of xAI's Colossus 2 data center water consumption against hamburger production figures challenges the assumption that AI infrastructure is…
• A home Bitcoin miner that heats your shower water — Superheat debuted at CES 2026 a home ASIC device that repurposes Bitcoin mining heat for water heating, spotlighting a broader inefficiency in how we…
• Why Chinese waste-to-energy plants are hungry for Western trash — China built over 1,000 waste-to-energy plants, but moisture-heavy local garbage drops furnace temperatures into the dioxin-forming range — making dry…
• How supersonic jet engines could power AI data centers — Boom is adapting its supersonic jet engine to generate electricity for data centers, potentially eliminating the water-cooling workaround that limits…
• From banana leaves to the lab: the science behind chocolate — A breakdown of the fermentation process that turns raw cacao into chocolate, alongside the lab-grown cacao technology that could reshape the global…
• Small modular reactors and the case for a new nuclear age — From AI data centers to lunar bases, this post examines how small modular reactors work, why tech giants are betting on them, and what risks remain.
• Ethanol: from sugarcane and yeast to fuel, antiseptics and tax law — A concise look at ethanol — how it is produced from plants, why it is considered a relatively clean fuel, and why industrial grades are deliberately…
• Vertical forests: why green buildings fail and what makes them work — A tale of two green projects — Chengdu's mosquito-plagued ghost towers and Milan's celebrated Bosco Verticale — reveals what separates failure from…
• Hydrogen cars: how they work and what is holding them back — From the electrochemistry of the fuel cell to the challenges of green hydrogen production, a clear look at the technology, its promise, and its current…
• Methane: from swamp gas to Saturn's moon and a crater that won't stop — A concise explainer on methane covering its biological origins, its role shaping Titan's landscape, and the Darvaza crater that has burned since 1971.
• Carbon: the element that makes life possible and threatens it — From DNA to fossil fuels and carbon monoxide poisoning, a concise look at the chemistry that makes carbon both essential to life and a source of serious…
• How FPSO platforms use hydrostatics and electrostatics to process oil — A look at how FPSO vessels exploit hydrostatic pressure, gravity separation, and electrostatic fields to extract, process, and store crude oil far…
• Bioluminescence: from glowing cave larvae to self-lit street trees — The luciferase-luciferin reaction behind New Zealand's glowing cave worms also points toward engineered luminescent trees as a future alternative to…
• Aluminium is the most recyclable material humans use — From Napoleon's dinner table to modern recycling plants, aluminium's near-perfect recyclability and staggering energy savings make it unlike any other…
• How levitation works — and why it matters for climate and quantum — From Meissner-effect superconductors to optical tweezers and the Casimir force, this piece explains how levitation works and what room-temperature…
• Duck flocks as pest control: a low-tech farming method with — A traditional Asian practice of releasing duck flocks into rice paddies boosts soil fertility, suppresses weeds, and according to a 2013 study of 1,000…
• The skydiver who seeded 100 million trees over the Amazon — Brazilian skydiving record-holder Luigi Cani spent five years planning a single jump that scattered 100 million tree seeds over the Amazon, with satellite
• A controlled nuclear blast to reverse decades of carbon emissions — A proposed geoengineering plan would use an 81-gigaton nuclear detonation to pulverize basalt rock, absorbing 30 years' worth of global carbon emissions…
• Google's new California office is built from wood, and the carbon — Google's new timber office building emits 96% less carbon than a concrete-and-steel equivalent, raising questions about sustainable construction and its…
• Antarctica's thaw is turning a frozen continent into a geopolitical — As global warming melts Antarctic ice and exposes vast natural resources, international disputes over the continent's ownership are intensifying.
• From paper-savers to power-hungry: the environmental cost of modern — A 1994 photo of Bill Gates illustrates how computing shifted from saving forests to consuming vast amounts of fossil-fuel energy in the age of AI and…