big ideas

White paint to help cool a hot planet.

A professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University has created the whitest paint on record. “The paint’s properties are almost superheroic. It can make surfaces as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit cooler than ambient air temperatures at midday, and up […]

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Geothermal energy: 2023 update.

“The geothermal technology flywheel is getting close to being self-sustaining. Commercial closed-loop projects should be operational within the next 2-3 years. They will spark copycats if they are successful.” ~ learn more

big ideas

For sale: a promise to remove invisible gas.

Jamie Wong, a “Software engineer learning about climate tech”, wrote this primer on Carbon Dioxide Removal and the industry forming around it. He discusses the various startups working on pulling carbon out of the air and storing it somewhere permanent, […]

big ideas

Earth’s microbial diversity may be underestimated.

A recent survey of 99 coral reefs found 500k species, which is kind of a lot. “The immense diversity of the microbes on the reefs may offer “ecological insurance” for coral, fish and other inhabitants, Pierre Galand, a researcher at […]

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JP Morgan’s big bet on carbon removal.

They are funding direct-air capture, which is probably my favorite technology solution for removing carbon from the air. The problem is that it requires a lot of energy, so it’s expensive. But by both raising capital for the providers (they […]

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Adapting to climate change.

“The remarkable decline in the US temperature-mortality relationship over the twentieth century.” Air conditioners are one of the three adaptations. This reinforces the point that climate predictions that don’t account for adaptation (probably most of them?) are missing something critical. […]

big ideas

Stripe CEO interviews OpenAI CEO.

Patrick Collison fires question after question at Sam Altman, and gets pretty thoughtful answers in return. One interesting fact: ChatGPT is really the only AI product that Altman uses. And his most common use case is summarization. They also get […]