Ammonia will (and does) leak into the environment where it becomes a part of the natural nitrogen cycle. The end result of the natural nitrogen cycle is N2O (aka laughing gas) which is a greenhouse gas 250-350x more powerful than CO2.
Running the world on ammonia, even if logistically possible, will likely accelerate climate change, not slow it.
This is an excellent question. Firstly, there are some very major differences between bringing a species back from extinction and saving a species from extinction. Perhaps the most radical difference is cost, with resurrecting an extinct species being likely impossible but best case costing at least 4 orders of magnitude more.
If the cost of a chicken egg was $10,000 it would likely not be worth the trouble. At $0.15 or $0.60, though, chicken eggs provide an excellent value and are nice to have around!
The real question here is why intervene to keep a species from extinction? The answer is that genetic diversity is massive valuable. The trouble is that the value assessment is very hard to calculate concretely and that value is also very hard to extract in the form of direct profits.
Let’s take the banana as an example.
The global banana market had sales of about $140B in 2023… clearly people value bananas. Today 99% of global trade in bananas is in a single variety, the “Cavendish” banana. But it was not always so. Until the 1950’s the world’s dominant banana was the “Gros Michel”. Over the course of the 1950’s the Gros Michel went commercially extinct as a result of “Panama Disease”. Researchers scoured the world to find a banana not susceptible to Panama Disease that could replace the Gros Michel in commerce. What they found is the Cavendish.
Today, a new strain of Panama Disease has evolved to target the Cavendish. Extinction of Cavendish is proceeding more slowly than that of the Gros Michel, but it seems more or less inevitable at this point.
The fact that we are likely to see 2 varieties of banana go commercially extinct within a single century, is kind of nuts. It seems that the half-life of a commercial banana variety is less that 50 years. The only reason we still have commercial bananas today is because of the rather deep genetic diversity in bananas the earth continued to possess in the 1950’s. That genetic diversity is significantly diminished today.
If we value the banana market as a perpetual annuity with the 2023 growth rate of 7% and a discount rate of 3%, the net present value of the banana market to the citizens of the world is approximately $3.5 Trillion.
How much is it rational to spend preserving this perpetual annuity? Anyway you slice it, the answer is very big… and very much bigger than is currently being spent to preserve the genetic diversity of the banana today.
What was the value of the American Chestnut tree? Hard to say, but it is clear that the loss was massive. I've read estimates that the American Chestnut provided (as fodder) something like 10% of the energy for the pre-extinction American transportation system as well as a substantial winter food source for all kinds of livestock, game and people. Just as transportation energy the yearly value of the American Chestnut would have been about 2% of US GDP.
None of these joints is novel in the slightest. Still, is it awesome to have them so well documented. Additionally, the CNC makes them much much easier to use!
If the glue has failed, there are some serious craftsmanship issues regardless of the joint type.
With the exception of the joints labeled "...with key" these joints are all very remote from the types of joints used in traditional Japaneses temples which do not use glue.
These are mostly western style joints, which are also very beautiful and useful, but generally expected to be assembled with glue.
Agree that you "can't expect the glue to deal with the forces"
A good craftsman would not choose a joint that would see such high stresses.
Additionally if the glue is chosen and applied properly, the wood that the glue adheres to should fail long before the glue.
That said, glue is not as simple as it may seem. There are many different types and proper surface prep and application makes a huge difference to ultimate strength.
For example, many people will mix 2 part epoxy until it "looks mixed" which for a clear epoxy happens pretty quickly. In truth, the resulting bond strength is far more closely related to the amount of mechanical energy that has been transferred into the mixture than the visual uniformity.
Lots of ways to go wrong with glue... but a good craftsman should be well aware of these.
This goes against the conventional wisdom that a properly glued wood junction is stronger than the wood itself, and that under such forces it is the wood that will fail.
The wood would've failed at the same place if you'd carved a whole chair in that shape out of a solid piece of wood. The problem is that the design concentrates forces at the joint (or the "junction") in a way that no material can withstand.
Personally, I feel your average student is likely to perform quite poorly for the first couple years at a real job regardless of the institution they attended.
It is all about the individuals!
I've worked with so many people who grew up poor or had other disadvantages, went to community college or their local city or state school, and then turned into fabulously productive and insightful people.
Conversely, I've worked with so many people who graduated from elite institutions who have not turned out so well.
I'm the first to admit that the elite institutions generate a higher hit rate, but not nearly high enough for me to discount people coming out of lesser schools.
One of the smartest (and richest!) guys I know graduated from San Jose State.
City College of New York has graduated more Nobel Prize winners than any other institution in the world!
Could the more selective intake account for most of the higher hit rate? I have a hard time believing either education is actually better, except a fancier school helps build a network faster and increase chances of being sponsored/hired by alumni.
The number of people who are in the traditional college age bracket is falling as a result of variations in the birthrate and immigration rate.
Some schools are more effected by these demographic issues than others. Institutions that are focused on educating lots of people economically, like CSU, can be expected to feel the demographic swings far more than places like Stanford or Berkeley which are over-subscribed and are likely to remain so.
Greenhouse gas solution? no.
Ammonia will (and does) leak into the environment where it becomes a part of the natural nitrogen cycle. The end result of the natural nitrogen cycle is N2O (aka laughing gas) which is a greenhouse gas 250-350x more powerful than CO2.
Running the world on ammonia, even if logistically possible, will likely accelerate climate change, not slow it.
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