Autodesk and support of RWE coal mine

M by Moult on 11 Sep 2020, edited 16 Sep 2020 # +1 votes

I came across a thread on Twitter by JoanieLemercier talking about how Autodesk supports RWE which operates very large mines. The Twitter thread claims this means that Autodesk is indirectly supporting the generation of 3.168 tons of CO2 per second.

I generate ~100 tones of CO2e (note: CO2e) per year.

Just wondering if others have come across this? I haven't read about it in the mainstream press, and although it is unsurprising that this type of thing happens in the world, I wish it didn't. I also wish OSArch could do something about it.

Some reading:

L by lukas on 11 Sep 2020, edited 11 Sep 2020 #

That is the fate of Earth in our actual system.. we need a lot of energy..

the more we produce, the more organisation we need to keep it running somehow, and for organisation even more energy is needed..

this is basic thermodynamics. Physics tells you (entropie) that everything goes somehow to cheap heat...as the universe is expanding, the fate is to cool down to the 4°K of background space temperature.. to survive we have no choice than to consume energy to organise a livable world... we where lucky 4 billions years long, as some singalurity create the milky way, our sun, and earth gave birth to living matter. 'Mother nature' cared about the energy supply, the living organisation had its energy. From single cells came the humans.. civilisation, this costs a huge amount of organisation and therefore energy.

All we can hope for is: commercial nuclear fusion.. or the more probable way: reduce consumption to almost zero and civilisation to a minimum..

if you know french... www.thinkerview.com, but be aware, this is totally depressing.

Opensource is one of the hopefull activity humans invented. This can and must break the industrial politics around the world.

We need to reduce the energy hunger of organisation.. (organisation is the fight against entropie, like living is against death)

Get local.. in everything, but github :-(

I think this out of scope of OSarch.. I believe we all do think and feel like you.. keep on going.. it will make sense against all odds.

Lukas

R by ReD_CoDE on 11 Sep 2020 #

This could be part of the scop, IF we focus on the circular economy topic

However, personally I'm not sure the community be ready for this

Still, the topics here are about some preliminary things about BIM

C by Cyril on 11 Sep 2020, edited 11 Sep 2020 # +1 votes

@Moult I tried to find some additional info. Autodesk reaction is wrong. They are practising green washing a lot like many (all? ) big companies. They showcased a coal mine project which shows their obvious inconsistencies. But they are doing tools and I think they must not control who use it.

The greater Blender BIM addon become greater the project made with it will be but also greater will be the chance that it will used to build a coal mine or similar.

There was a discussion on FreeCAD forum some time ago because someone saw the software has been used to design 3d printed weapons. Difference with Autodesk is that they do not showcase it, support it, take advantage of it and community is not happy about this.

What is important I think is to allow people to optimise process and make research and development easier. Even for a coal mine if process is better it is still less energy consumed for something they would have built whatever.

@ReD_CoDE said:

circular economy

The perfect bullshit word for industrials and politicians which wants people to forget that :

every process has an efficiency far from one
you cannot recycle infinitely because concentration is decreased with each cycle and energy consumption is raised with each cycle
many time you can avoid the need of recycling by choosing better your raw material
consumption rate cannot be maintained even using circular economy

@lukas I also watch thinkerview. They have set their peertube channel early ?

R by ReD_CoDE on 11 Sep 2020 #

The perfect bullshit word for industrials and politicians which wants people to forget that :

every process has an efficiency far from one

you cannot recycle infinitely because concentration is decreased with each cycle and energy consumption is raised with each cycle

many time you can avoid the need of recycling by choosing better your raw material

consumption rate cannot be maintained even using circular economy

This is not really the main idea behind the circular economy, however, I understand you

This forum won't be better than FreeCAD forum

J by JanF on 11 Sep 2020 # +1 votes

@lukas you're right in the first half, but I disagree with the conclusions you draw.

I don't see how destroying the whole civilization is the more likely outcome. Until now the humanity has always found a way to solve the problems with technology (natural disasters, diseases, "manforming" the necessary habitats etc.)
What would it bring? As you correctly state, so far we currently understand the laws of physics, the universe will end. Whether by that point humanity lives in a village among green fields or spread around Dyson spheres across galaxy is irrelevant.
We don't need fusion technology, with fission we can support the civilization for hundreds of years.
Why do you think we must break the industrial politics? It sounds way too much as a revolution. From what I gather, the idea is to evolve slowly towards a more democratic society, not to turn it somehow upside down. In my opinion the main driver for open source is the need to give everyone, individuals as well as governments for example, the freedom to live and work without the harassment by big software corporations. It would be of course lovely to think of a way to transfer this outside of the digital world as well, but I don't think being local has anything to do with this.

In my opinion the biggest problem in the western world is that people in the incredibly complex society are quickly losing vision and pulling themselves back into isolation hoping that someone else will deal with the trouble. And the solution to this is to support democratic and open processes everywhere we can, BIM is about clear, structured and open communication, why couldn't it lead to better working governments and more open politics? I don't we need a revolution, I think that if we have enough projects like osarch the world will be just fine.

B by brunopostle on 12 Sep 2020 #

As creators of Open Source software you have even less control over what your users do with your software than a proprietary company. This is obviously a concern, giving freedom to your users has a downside, there is no easy solution.

But the way to deal with this is to avoid simply copying the functionality of existing proprietary software that is often optimised to enable bad behaviour in the industry. For example, buildings are better if they fit their environment better, but companies that specialise in banging out spreadsheet architecture don't give a damn about that and the tools they use reflect this. Here are a couple of ideas:

A lot of the monotony and repetition in architecture is because as designers and planners we need the design to stay legible (not because of Taylorist production efficiencies, bricklayers don't give you a discount for making all your walls the same). A design that is crudely repeated is by definition not fitting the the environment better, let's have tools that make local customisation easy while keeping the project as a whole legible. This carries through to drawing generation: "this house is the same as this other house, except for these bits that are different".

Another avenue for differentiation is use of recycled materials. A major obstacle to using recycled materials in building projects is that it is really hard to specify, to the extent that you end up specifying mass-produced recycled materials because they have consistency. Let's make it really easy to incorporate found items and materials at any stage of a project.

S by stephen_l on 16 Sep 2020 #

Software run on computers and computers are energy hungry things also contributing to global heating whatever we do, open source or not.

The failure to build a true working CO2 tax system, leading to "green certificates" where coal based electricity with a "green" tag is cheaper than water/solar/wind one (and even nuclear) and often even sold a higher rate because of that green tag, so consumers are fooled twice.