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Combating Climate Risks With 3D Printing
Lasrick writes: While security risks that emanate from climate change will not always require military responses, the technological innovations that 3D printing makes possible can significantly improve the tools available for both militaries and civilian institutions when responding to, preparing for, and mitigating those risks. These benefits come in five main forms, and this article details what they are and how each may work: Rapid response and prototyping; Democratization of preparedness and response; De-globalizing hazards; Increasing accessibility; Enhancing energy efficiency. The authors clearly believe that 3D printing will be a key tool in mitigating effects from natural disasters: "If the United States, including the Department of Defense, truly believes that climate change presents 'immediate risks to national security,' then developing all the tools necessary to combat those risks should be a high priority. 3D printing, given its potential utility in helping us adapt to and mitigate climate risks, and doing so cost-effectively, is one tool that deserves close attention."
3D printing! It slices, it dices, it cures erectile dysfunction (even yours!), it fucking prints money! It. will. save. the. world.
Whoa Sparky...slow down. Breathe.
3D printing may be useful, great, but kill the hyperbole. It is a technology, and all technologies have a niche. Be a 3D printing fanbois all you want, but you cannot jam 3D printing into places where it is not wanted or is not useful. The users will know the difference and 3D printing will settle into its niche naturally.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Peak Oil may be a ways off, but we've definitely hit Peak Buzzword.
On an unrelated note, is anyone interested in buying a barely used and a slightly dusty 3D printer?
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
TFA is unclear.
Are the 3D-printing fanbois trying to ride on the Warmist's :"perceived-legitimacy" coattails, or is it the Wamists who are attempting to ride 3D-printing's "perceived-legitimacy" coattails?
Seems to be a lose-lose either way.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I'm not sure what they are fishing for. The authors are with the Center for Climate and Security (http://climateandsecurity.org/staff/), but don't have any obvious reasons to be 3D printing shills (which is possibly why the article reads like crap). The Center for Climate and Security has a lot of generals and admirals on its board of trustees. I'm wondering if this isn't some wild backdoor appropriations move. I'm actually interested to see if any of them are holding a lot of stock in 3D printing development firms. There is money at the bottom of this somewhere.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Clearly somebody owns a 3D printing company and is looking to get grants from the EPA and DARPA, etc.
k.... I tried to follow the thinking here and failed.
It's as though someone took the terrified mind of a Sierra Club propagandized millennial and blended it with the mind of a slashdot basement dweller; out pops a strange being that blathers endlessly about 3D printing, climate change and saving the world.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The article also seems to think 3D printers can make anything out of thin air. You save transportation costs because you don't need to ship anything, and you avoid supply chain disruptions because you don't have to ship anything.
From the article:
The effects of natural disasters extend far beyond individual companies. In 2012, a severe drought temporarily halted the transport of goods down the Mississippi River, affecting the entire region. This is the type of problem likely to become more common in a changing climate. The ability to print goods where they are needed would clearly decrease vulnerability to droughts and other disruptive weather events.
From the linked Bloomberg Article on the drought:
which could be shut to cargo from companies including Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. next month.
-Agricultural. We can print food now?
“If you’re shipping raw materials to a steel mill in Chicago, you’re trying to figure out if you can go to Cincinnati or Louisville, Kentucky, unload it out of the barge and rail it up to the steel mill.”
-Thank god 3D printers can print steel out of nothing
Barges on the Mississippi handle about 60 percent of the nation’s grain exports entering the Gulf of Mexico through New Orleans, as well as 22 percent of its petroleum and 20 percent of its coal.
Good thing we can print fossil fuels now too.
Very good point. 3D printing basically lets you remotely manufacture a part if the raw manufacturing materials are present on site . And it does jack shit to fuel your equipment.
One of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. military in the Iraq war was to be a driver in a convoy - the folks that had to haul fuel, water, and supplies through unfriendly country. I worry that some asshat in the Pentagon is going to read this article (written by asshats) and think that 3D printing magically makes supply lines invisible ("in the cloud, derp!"). The only result will be that the folks hauling fuel, water, supplies, and multicolored 3D printer filament spools will die in the next war.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
"Very good point. 3D printing basically lets you remotely manufacture a part if the raw manufacturing materials are present on site . And it does jack shit to fuel your equipment."
One of the more ridiculous claims in the Article was this:
"A new generator, for example, could be printed on the spot."
No, it can not. Not unless there is available Copper for the windings, Iron for the Magnetic stuff, Steel or Aluminum for the frame, not to mention Insulation, Lubrication, Bearings... and that is just the Generator. If it needs an Engine...
But the Clincher is this:
"... a replacement part for a broken water pump handle..."
That is what Vice Grip Pliers are for, especially if the damn "Printer" needs now-unavailable Water Cooling.
"The Bulletin" has an interesting history. (I was once a Subscriber, and I knew a couple of the Founders.) Among other things, it explored Science and Tech that is not quite ready for Prime Time, but feasible.
But this Article is dreadful. The Famous Quote applies: "It's not even wrong."
Leave 3D Printing to the Gun Nuts for now. They are still little kids playing with firecrackers, but with a lot of ready funds and available time.
And leave it for those who are absolutely intent in printing out their own Shower Rings.
Adults have better things to think about.
By the power invested in me by me, I mod this +1 Informative.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
... is to download the software template for a power station right off the Internet.
Oh, wait ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You are absolutely right, you can't make raw materials out of thin air, and introducing 3D printers just means there are a more raw materials being added to the mix.However, I'm going to jump off this comment to make a counterpoint: 3D printing has the possibility to make specialized finished goods as fungible as raw materials. Rather than worrying whether a person needs a shoe, a splint or a crutch, you can just send the raw plastic and the printer and figure it out on a case by case basis, which could be both faster and more efficient. It simplifies not only the logistics of bringing things into the area, but distribution as well. It's not uncommon in disasters for needed supplies to be in the affected zone, but in the wrong area with no available transport, or forgotten entirely. If you are making the goods as needed, this becomes less of a problem.
That all said, 3D printing is just not yet nearly fast or versatile enough to be helpful in disasters, outside of a few specialized niches.
OK, at the risk of being down-modded, I agree with you - the people modding you down don't understand what the scam is, and it's not that global warming doesn't exist.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Why do that when you can spend 100x more 3D Printing two rows of LEGO bricks to make a wall along the beach?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
You are absolutely right, you can't make raw materials out of thin air
Not yet, maybe, but in five years' time...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it