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- cross-posted to:
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34272214
A California-based biotechnology startup has officially launched the world’s first commercially available butter made entirely from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, eliminating the need for traditional agriculture or animal farming. Savor, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, announced the commercial release of its animal- and plant-free butter after three years of development.
The revolutionary product uses a proprietary thermochemical process that transforms carbon dioxide captured from the air, hydrogen from water, and methane into fat molecules chemically identical to those found in dairy butter. According to the company, the process creates fatty acids by heating these gases under controlled temperature and pressure conditions, then combining them with glycerol to form triglycerides.
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Thank goodness we have the assurances of a billionaire oligarch to help steer humanity in the right dietary direction.
Global warming and ecological crises make shifting diets away from animal products a pretty good idea.
Whether it’s antibiotics resistance, deforestation, or greenhouse gas emissions, humanity is paying a very high price for animal agriculture at the current scale.
Problems come up: “BILLIONAIRES SHOULD DO MORE!” Billionaires do more: “WE CANT TRUST BILLIONAIRES!!”
The conclusion ought to be that billionaires shouldn’t exist. Even if they donate most of their wealth, they will still donate in ways that aren’t necessarily solving real problems.
On that we agree
Ruminants creating greenhouse gasses is a problem that can solve itself by returning to huge fucking pastures and cooperative farming.
Instead, we’re getting synthetic food. We’re a decade removed from human grade kibble at this point.
Here again, capitalism is the problem. A capitalist offering capitalism solutions to problems created by capitalism isn’t appealing.
Good ol’ Gates, always around to make a quick buck of the bloodied backs of humanity. Never an advancement meant to aid us all he can’t swoop in to parasitize. That’s right Billy boy, I didn’t forget the COVID vaccine patents. Billionaires must be condemned to the rubbish bin of history.
Were just all their rentboys.
I’m a traditionalist, I prefer my butter silicon based. Maybe germanium or tin if it’s a special occasion
This could be great, but “proprietary”. Gates is still the same Gates. If you want to save all the land and CO2 this could, release the IP free to all. Flood the market with cheap indistinguishable synobutter, real butter can’t compete with. Milk, cheese and yogurt next please.
I’m not a scientist, but isn’t EVERYTHING made of carbon?
Source: Joni Mitchell, Woodstock -
We are stardust, we are golden We are billion-year-old carbon
“Made of” can mean “composed of” or “constructed from”. This is the latter:
Savor says they take carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heat them up, oxidize them and get a final result that looks like candle wax but is in fact fat molecules like those in beef, cheese or vegetable oils.
The entire process releases zero greenhouse gases, uses no farmland to feed cows, and despite its industrial appearance, has a significantly smaller footprint.
“In addition to the carbon footprint being much lower for a process like this, right, the land footprint is, like, a thousand times lower than what you need in traditional agriculture,”
Good example of how choice of words can mislead, particularly when intentional.
Didnt the Nazis also make something similar using coal?
You’re probably thinking of the Fischer-Tropsch process for making gasoline.
Of all things…butter! I’m sure it’ll be more expensive than real butter with the way things work nowadays.
Yeah #govegan, I love it. I am curious to try it. Great invention.
but does it actually taste like the real thing? because I can already buy something that, supposedly, I should be unable to believe isn’t real butter, but after doing so I remain suspicious
The first time I had “I can’t believe it’s not butter,” I said “I can believe it’s not butter.”
Should be a nice change from that silicon based butter I usually get.
Cyberpunk shit getting real
Butter backed by Bill Gates? Is that the same Bill Gates who became wealthy and famous for his commanding knowledge of butter?
I must be losing my mind because I thought I saw this post 2 days ago except it said beer.
So when I poop the carbon butter out, how long does it take to decompose? Because unless we make one of those nuclear waste containment salt bunkers for all. the butter carbon poop this kinda seems like a dumb idea.
I can see why some people might conflate Carbon Monomers and Carbon Polymer Chains with plastics, because thats what plastics are after all, but it’s also the basic building block for almost all organic chemistry including proteins, fats (lipids), sugars, alcohols, and sugar alcohols (totally different thing from sugar and alcohol btw). Carbon can even form compounds with Ammonia, such as Carbamides like Urea which can be extracted from Uric Acid using Sodium and then used as agriculture grade fertilizers.
It’s why we’re called Carbon Based Lifeforms.
If you think that’s crazy you should see all the wacky shit that Hydrogen gets up to.
Atoms are atoms. All they are doing here is artificially creating fat molecules rather than getting them from the environment so the decomposing time is not affected.
Yup, should be equivalent to biologically created butter.
About as long as meat, since that is also made from carbon.
Or butter.
