The Environmental thread + Conventional (HI-FI) wisdom is almost always invariably wrong

[Ralf11]

there are ways to recover a lot of information from an image (computational photography) and from an audio recording too

 

you will see a lot more of this in the future

[Ralf11]

as the topic seems to have shifted a bit, I will offer some musical history:

 

in 1700s New Orleans, Creole gentlemen had to use their walking sticks to shoo the alligators away from the wooden banquets (sidewalks) so their ladies could make their way to the opera

 

also, when the Acadians showed up, expecting a warm welcome from their fellow French, they were not allowed to live in the city but were sent to the swamps -- when the Americans showed up (after having purchased the whole place), THEY were not allowed to live in the city either, but had to start their own 'ghetto' - today it is called the Garden District, and the medians on wide streets are still called the neutral grounds

 

I hope to meet all you boys on the battlefront...

[Ralf11]

Gumbo is culturally appropriate food

[Ralf11]

Actually, things are worse than most people think: 

- They think catastrophic effects from climate change are 50 or more years away.

- They think climate change can be reversed with electric cars and the elimination of fossil fuels.

 

 

[Ralf11]

3 hours ago, esldude said:

2000 watt society?

 

https://phys.org/news/2013-05-road-watt-society.html

 

Not adequate.

 

If ALL CO2 and CH4 emissions stopped today, there is still ~~40 years of global warming built in.

 

The only solution is to remove carbon (CO2) from the atmosphere and sequester it.  There is currently no way to do that.

 

So, things will get worse (even as some areas of technological prowess increase).  

 

Expect impacts to food supplies, fires (ecosystem conversion), wars, chaos, and other forms of hell.  It is unclear what the impacts to civilization will be.

[Ralf11]

17 hours ago, Paul R said:

High levels of CO2 encourage plant growth, which actually does sequester carbon.    

 

Also, there are other ways to cut back on global warming,  -> if <- that is what we should do.  I am not utterly convinced we want to reverse global warming, at least not completely. The planet has been warmer (and cooler) than this within historical memory.  If I had to choose, I would choose warmer over cooler. 

 

1. The increased plant growth is inadequate to avert catastrophic effects of climate change -- and warming is only one of three effects.

 

2. You are mistaken about the magnitude of the effects and their impact on civilization.

 

I advise some reading - start with the latest IPCC report.

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, Paul R said:

 

And I advise far more objectivity and research for you, snd with a wider scope. 

 

Paul - you should stick to something you have a t least a modicum of expertise in -- your comments on this topic merely show your ignorance.

[Ralf11]

31 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

Well, we both agree neither one of us wants to listen to an idiot. I certainly do not care to listen to you.

 

Please crawl back under whatever rock you came out from under with your arrogant attitude and inane personal attacks on me. Far better if you leave the civilized folks to discuss things with intelligent reason instead of - whatever it is you are showing. 

 

 

 

You would be well advised to post on something you know about and stop with your childish name-calling of scientists working in an area you do not understand.

 

You are hardly an exemplar of intelligent reason.

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, esldude said:

I can add a few possibilities too.  But you stop at the point where it gets interesting.  What worked, what is a solution going forward?  Not a total solution, but what things are workable and in need of doing? Maybe the 1hr long podcast goes into that.  I didn't listen to it yet.  A transcript would be nicer. 

 

We know we have to de-carbonize which hasn't been news for about 30 years at least.  Now what to do?  And you have to get people on board.  Do we have more people and no pets or do we have pets and fewer people?  In the USA there have been fairly incredible advances in the efficiency and power of IC engines for cars and trucks.  But what has happened?  They use that efficiency to build larger and larger vehicles that are about as consuming of gasoline as the old ones.  And those are the vehicles that have sold.  Easy to say we should have fuel economy standards (we should) etc. etc., but that hasn't worked politically or in the marketplace.  I was pissed off with the unfairness of the Cash for Clunkers deal.  For those not in the USA, the gov't gave a nice big  several thousand dollar discount if you turned in an old gas guzzler and purchased something new getting at least 20% better mileage.  Of course there were limits, if your current car had a mileage rating above a certain number you didn't qualify.  So at the time I had a 17 year old car that was in need of replacement, but it had an EPA rating too high to qualify.  So there were people getting thousands of dollars to turn in a vehicle buy an even larger one that was just slightly better than the old one and that got about half the mileage of the car I had.  I felt like they had rewarded wasteful people and punishing those who had been frugal with fuel like myself.  I understood why, and yet it didn't sit well with me.  It was probably a good program.  Oil consumption has somewhat been reigned in compared to past growth in the US and that was an important piece that started to turn the corner.  It is unclear if it was overall a benefit economically.  

 

 

 

it's not too hard to put PV panels on every rooftop; EVs are not too much more difficult

 

then there are things like deforestation, termite proliferation, etc. which are harder

 

emissions from cattle are controllable as most US herds are in CAFOs, so you can put a roof over the ones w/o roofs, then collect the methane for use (instead of venting into the atmosphere)

 

these are all ways to reduce the effects, but as I noted before you cannot get around the 35-40 yr lag time w/o removing CO2 )and lots of it) from the atmosphere, something that is not currently feasible

 

we are left with retreating from coastal areas (or building differently a la Venice) in places rich enough to do so - Miami and S. Manhattan (for example, the big Wall St. firms have already moved HVAC and other critical systems from the basements to the rooftops - after Sandy)

 

we will need to shift food resources (no more oysters, but plenty of crabs); forests will convert to grassland and desert - a process already underway

 

humans displaced by climate disruption will migrate north (from Africa to Europe, from S/C Amer. to the US) if they can

 

other animals will migrate north too - disease vectors, parasites, etc.

 

societies in the hardest hit areas will be increasingly vulnerable and conflicts, including war will increase - DoD has some very fun reading on this

 

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, esldude said:

Yes, I've read a few of the bits of DoD literature.  Always funny to have a Republican administration denying global warming is a thing while its military is planning for exactly that. 

 

 

Luckily, the "deep state" is too deep for the shallow to affect.

[Ralf11]

maybe you can ship the collected gas to Pompous Paul

[Ralf11]

I'm sorry if I hurt your good friend's feelings.

 

However, you are the one who has driven  number of good people away from this site.  People with a lot to contribute too.

[Ralf11]

a 30 mph limit is unlikely & if any limit were to be adopted it should the speed of max. fuel efficiency

 

EV range is an issue today but fast (very fast) recharging is coming soon...

 

Back to Methane:

 

largest sources are wetlands & rice paddies

 

next, ruminants & termites (which are linked to tropical deforestation)

 

coal mining, gas production, landfills are in the 3rd tier

 

what is worrisome is that CH4 levels are rising faster than expected - while the source is unclear it may be from loss of permafrost in tundra regions, and there are some large bubble like objects in Siberia suggesting that warming is starting to liberate large amounts of CH4 (which will cause even more warming)

 

 

for a brief response to some of the crazier posts above - Gloggle Arrhenius to see when the "global warming thing" started

[Ralf11]

scientific understanding of the effect dates to the 1800s

 

it was noted in greenhouses before that but not known as to the mechanism

 

 

[Ralf11]

I taught it to general ecology undergrads. in the 1980s...

 

The "invented to get money and grants" screed is something put out by the PR firm for the fossil fuels industry -- and guess what?  

 

It is the same PR firm that the big tobacco co.s used in their pro-cancer smoking campaign...

[Ralf11]

[Ralf11]

Thx for that non-answer - none of those are irreversible 

 

you do not see good solidly researched answers because you are too lazy to look for them

[Ralf11]

most things vary by state, with Calif. requiring PV panels on all new houses

- there have been tax breaks for PV installs, heat pumps, and insulation

 

some cities have adopted LEED stds.

 

no requirements per se for sustainable timber harvest, tho states such as Wash. and Oregon have very minimal stds. requiring timber co.s to do things like replainting (which they would do anyway) on private lands

- federal lands have a bit higher stds. in the PNW, mainly due to lawsuits

 

for forestlands, the big issue in Oregon was to prevent development as Californians & others flood into the state - it dates from 1971; today, the big issue all over the western US is to thin forests to reduce wildfire risk, including mega-fires -- these thinning operations usually cost $$ as the trees are often too small to sell as lumber

 

Wash. has a statewide version of NEPA (a federal law) requiring planning, alternatives & public input; Oregon has land use planning but no state NEPA

 

I'm not aware of a single link, or single compendium on all this

 

to understand the driving impetus for all of this, go upthread and read Sandy's comments about political pressure from large corporations...

 

[Ralf11]

just remember: chicken is the tofu of meat

[Ralf11]

9 minutes ago, botrytis said:

@esldudeBiofuels do make sense. You can never make more energy than you put in. It is with all fuels. Biofuels reformulated from fats made from algae makes sense - just add light and carbon dioxide. Even the US Military states we need to rethink about Biofuels. They say it is for our National Security.

 

I have working in biofuels for 20 years. If we supported them as much as we do the Petroleum Industry (I mean government support) they would work out the problems, I have no doubt. But, the Petroleum Industry doesn't want that.

 

current biofuels are mostly the result of subsidies to big ag. - corn

 

biofuels make a lot of sense based on what is in the lab now - algae, switchgrass and etc.

 

one co. here collects cooking fat & makes biodiesel

 

esl - you left out using better technologies for the same energy use by the same # people

 

I emphasize for the 3rd time that all of this just reduces somewhat the catastrophic impacts - we need to remove GHGs from the atmosphere to keep things like they are now, or like they were a couple of decades ago

[Ralf11]

Yes, MTBE was and still is a disaster.

 

For EtOH, the corn based approach helps with emissions into an airshed, but the env'l costs to grow the corn, fertilize it, and transport it are high.

 

If 99% of cars, truck, etc. were electrical and getting recharged from PVs, aircraft would still likely require a liquid fuel.

 

Algae, and maybe switchgrass are the future for biofuels.  You also have a large banshee contingent who oppose all genetic modifications...

 

For home, commercial electrical & heating, A/C you do not need a high energy density at all.  Rooftop PVs plus the grid can easily solve that use.  Rooftop or local 'parks' with PVs also reduce transport losses, and rooftop PVs provide shading in hot climates.

 

Ultimately, GHG emissions do not need to be zero; they nearly need to be at a lower level than today, such as during the 1930s for example.  But things would first have to return to a rough equilibrium for that.

[Ralf11]

'nearly' 2 posts above should be 'merely'

[Ralf11]

2 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

"In France, it's still used in the same sense as always, as a sort of restrained, slightly fatalistic lamentation that this is how life is and there's not much you can do about it. "

 

 

 

do you have to stub out a Gauloises or a Gitane at the end of the sentence?

[Ralf11]

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/6/5/18650155/climate-change-oregon-carbon-cap-trade-california

[Ralf11]

11 hours ago, PeterSt said:

marmots....