Hurricane made me wonder

[ruffrecords]

I guess building houses (or speaker cabinets) with wood, takes that carbon out of the loop for some finite period.

JR

I think it might be interesting to look at the amount of deforestation is the last few hundred years and work out how much that has reduced the ability of mother earth to absorb CO2. It might just be the fact of cutting down the trees may be a bigger factor in causing the increase on CO2.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Phrazemaster]

One thing that makes me chuckle is when people claim burning trees is carbon neutral because the tree has already absorbed the CO2 that is released when it is burnt.  They forget that exactly the same is true of all fossil fuels.

Cheers

ian

Not to mention that the sequestered CO2 is then re-released back into the atmosphere upon burning, which normally wouldn't have happened except in the case of forest fire...

 

[JohnRoberts]

I think it might be interesting to look at the amount of deforestation is the last few hundred years and work out how much that has reduced the ability of mother earth to absorb CO2. It might just be the fact of cutting down the trees may be a bigger factor in causing the increase on CO2.

Cheers

Ian

There is actually a pretty old discussion about bad unintended consequences from clearing the rain forests in SA (Brazil?), reducing the atmospheric benefits from trees.  This discussion predates the global warming, aka climate change discussion.

I have more trees today on my property than when I bought it decades ago, and down here in MS some trees literally grow like weeds.

I cut down (and burned) some smaller weed-trees  today.  These weed -trees grow all winter long so if you don't cut them back constantly they take over. Honest trees only grow in the summer, so can get overcome by weed-trees

JR

 

[PRR]

Carbon per se is not the issue, it is that most carbon-compound gasses are "greenhouse gasses" and accused of warming the planet.

> trees literally grow like weeds.

That's the thing. If you are in a logged-out land, trees don't self-replace.

Places where trees are used for fuel, MS or Maine, trees ARE weeds. And yes, if I don't burn the wood, it lays there and rots and the carbon comes right back out as methane. Arguably it is slightly nicer to burn it to CO2. But few people burn wood as fast as the Maine forest re-grows and rots again.

If we *really* got burning, we could clear and burn a century of Maine Woods in a decade. Maine was largely logged-out 1750-1890, and we could do it faster now. Stop buying heating oil, expand our pellet and torification mills. Not going to happen: the woods-workers are getting old and the mills are cheating them on prices (despite subsidies), no large wood-export operations happening here.

The difference on fossil fuel is that with oil/coal/gas we will burn a million years of ancient sunshine in a century.

 

[JohnRoberts]

> As long as I didn't have to give up my internet.....

Your internet toys are the least of your energy pigs.

In FLA your A/C is typically the worst. The brutal answer is that most people could not be happy in Florida (or Nevada, Arizona, much of California) without their A/C. Move North!

Not just being happy...  8 seniors died in FL nursing home when Irma took out the air conditioning, 4 more in a hospital due to heat stress.

Add MS to that list that need air conditioning to be tolerable in the summer (my air is running right now).

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

Carbon per se is not the issue, it is that most carbon-compound gasses are "greenhouse gasses" and accused of warming the planet.

> trees literally grow like weeds.

That's the thing. If you are in a logged-out land, trees don't self-replace.

A popular business here is growing/harvesting many acres of softwood ( pine trees). Yes they have to be replanted after logging.  Some of the most dangerous vehicles on the roads are these old logging trucks held together by a wish and a prayer. I have picked up a few free vise grips from the roadside  while jogging that no doubt fell off makeshift truck repairs.

I have some huge pine trees on my property I'd like to harvest but I will have to pay somebody to top them (around power lines) and haul them away. So no profit in them. Prudent thing is to take them down before they fall down.

Places where trees are used for fuel, MS or Maine, trees ARE weeds. And yes, if I don't burn the wood, it lays there and rots and the carbon comes right back out as methane. Arguably it is slightly nicer to burn it to CO2. But few people burn wood as fast as the Maine forest re-grows and rots again.

IIRC there is a biofuel processing plant in MS that uses pine wood as its raw material.

The weed trees I am constantly cutting down are evergreen (which means they don't drop their leaves and grow year round).  I'm not sure what their exact name is but invasive Privet tree, looks close. People can use these to grow a hedge thicket to block a  sightline.  I can not imagine ever planting these on purpose, they will take over and crowd out other trees if not constantly cut back.  Here is an older one I cut down after it had almost completely wiped out an ornamental flowering tree that had pushed limbs out horizontally about 20' to find sunlight. Of course being contrary, it fell in the opposite direction I wanted it to drop (a center of mass thing).

If we *really* got burning, we could clear and burn a century of Maine Woods in a decade. Maine was largely logged-out 1750-1890, and we could do it faster now. Stop buying heating oil, expand our pellet and torification mills. Not going to happen: the woods-workers are getting old and the mills are cheating them on prices (despite subsidies), no large wood-export operations happening here.

The difference on fossil fuel is that with oil/coal/gas we will burn a million years of ancient sunshine in a century.

At some point oil will be worth more for making plastic goodies than burning for energy but we are not there yet.  Peak oil (running out) was widely predicted then didn't quite happen. The Saudi's are preparing a huge IPO to monetize their national oil industry while they still can get some money for it. Would have been a lot smarter to do that when oil was $100 barrel instead of current $50. Countries that are heavily dependant on oil, have seen better days.

JR

 

[cyrano]

Oil is no longer needed for plastics. We can make plastics from a lot of stuff, these days. Corn starch, to name just one.

Someone in The Netherlands promoted on a process to convert CO2 in plastics or very petroleum like fuels in industrial quantities. These processes are available already or in a short while.

The major problem is the capitalist corruption that seems inevitable. Example: the UK converted several major coal-burning electricity plants to pellets. Pellets are renewable in the EU's book, so it looks good. The UK won't have to buy CO2 bonds. Everybody happy.

What's happening in the real world, is that some major players are making a bundle by speculating with CO2 bonds. The pellets the UK plants are burning come from the USA. Mostly from deforestation thanks to strip mining. No tree is getting replanted, so not really "renewable". The states in the US that are getting stripped, make very little money from exporting pellets. In the UK, the govt seems happy, although most of them must know about the scam. And the problem is far too complex to be of any interest to the public. Besides, nothing the UK govt can do, because the scam is international and they're getting out of the EU anyway. Nobody in the UK seems to have any idea how they will handle their CO2 bonds problem, but hey, the press doesn't know it's a problem - yet.

That's just one example of corruption of a system that should work.

The major problem isn't CO2. It's the melting of the permafrost. That's happening and it is constantly accelerating. The amount of methane will dwarf CO2 emissions. Methane is worse than CO2.

And then there are the corpses. Thousands. Millions. Animals and humans alike. Died from small pocks, anthrax, the plague... All diseases we have no defense for. Nobody can predict how big of a problem this will be, but all agree it will be a problem. No solution in sight.

That's why the bickering has to stop. We're wasting valuable time discussing if it is a problem. Is it happening? Anybody with half a brain and some desire to learn, will be clear on this: it IS happening and it IS a problem.

The corporations have gone global years ago. It's only the people that still seem to think in terms of "nations".

 

[Andy Peters]

> As long as I didn't have to give up my internet.....

Your internet toys are the least of your energy pigs.

In FLA your A/C is typically the worst. The brutal answer is that most people could not be happy in Florida (or Nevada, Arizona, much of California) without their A/C. Move North!

I know that the air conditioning in my house (Tucson) is the largest energy consumer.  Second is the electric clothes dryer and the refrigerator. I don't really worry about leaving the internet routers and other crap like that on 24/7.

The new solar panels help. A lot.

 

[ruffrecords]

That's why the bickering has to stop. We're wasting valuable time discussing if it is a problem. Is it happening? Anybody with half a brain and some desire to learn, will be clear on this: it IS happening and it IS a problem.

What? is happening?

Cheers

Ian

 

[cyrano]

Do you need to hear the word?  ;D

Global warming.

These two words are enough to send the discussion to hell, each and every time. You all seem pretty aware, but you should stick your head out the door sometime

There's still a lot of folk around who have no idea what these two words mean.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Do you need to hear the word?  ;D

Global warming.

These two words are enough to send the discussion to hell, each and every time. You all seem pretty aware, but you should stick your head out the door sometime

There's still a lot of folk around who have no idea what these two words mean.

Well there is a scientific evidence based discussion and a political guilt-money redistribution discussion.

I suspect Ian understands more than most.

The temperature of the globe is just an empirical measurement ( data), like a weather report about weather that already happened, so not subject to debate.

The predictions about the future are not data, but theory, like predicting the weather 100 years from now, so unproved, while we have a geologic record going back millions of years. 

What to do based on this "sky is falling" call for immediate political action (involving huge wealth transfers), demands more study than just trusting politicians to redistribute our wealth wisely.

Beware of too simple answers for complex questions. 

JR

 

[cyrano]

I didn't explain properly. Sorry.

It's not a call for political action. Any fool can see that that will fail. Far too slow, no ideas, too much corruption. It seems your president got a little help from the Russians, fi.

It's a call for real, direct action.

You're creative. Invent a part of the solution.

Plastic in the oceans is a real, objective, measured problem. A Dutch teenager came up with a wild solution, at first sight. It looks like it just might work, a year later. Watch people like Dave Hakken on youtube. His brilliant idea is that plastic isn't waste. It's a raw material, so let's re-use it. And let's create the means for anyone to do it themselves, without govt money. That just might be the turning point when it comes to plastic waste.

That's the message. It IS possible if WE do it.

 

[ruffrecords]

Do you need to hear the word?  ;D

Global warming.

Here we go again. I said a few posts ago that global warming is a very general term. Global warming and cooling is going on all the time. It was warmer in the middle ages that it is now. It has been getting warmer all the time since the last ice age. It is what led to the birth of civilisation, Thousands of years ago there was no North Sea and the UK was part of one vast European continent.  So what are you talking about?

Cheers

Ian

 

[metalb00b00]

I didn't explain properly. Sorry.

It's not a call for political action. Any fool can see that that will fail. Far too slow, no ideas, too much corruption. It seems your president got a little help from the Russians, fi.

It's a call for real, direct action.

You're creative. Invent a part of the solution.

Plastic in the oceans is a real, objective, measured problem. A Dutch teenager came up with a wild solution, at first sight. It looks like it just might work, a year later. Watch people like Dave Hakken on youtube. His brilliant idea is that plastic isn't waste. It's a raw material, so let's re-use it. And let's create the means for anyone to do it themselves, without govt money. That just might be the turning point when it comes to plastic waste.

That's the message. It IS possible if WE do it.

speaking about plastic, I read about a week ago that there are many micro plastic fibers contaminating our water system and we "unknowingly" consume it everyday. some countries like the ol' USA apparently also have the highest contamination rate.

 

[cyrano]

This is a perfect example of the forward thinking i like:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/08/nasa-has-a-3-46-billion-plan-to-prevent-the-yellowstone-supervolcano-erupting

However, with a 34 billion $ budget, I can see some corruption coming.

Super volcano's, like the one in the Yellowstone park, are a real threat. We have one in Italy, too and in the East, Japan is sitting near a cluster too. And these WILL blow. Next year, or in three centuries. That's one part we don't really know.

I personally don't think plastic fibers in drinking water are "real". It sounds like one of those hyped up stories. But I don't know.

However, plastic particles on beaches and in marine life are real.  I've worked for a big water treatment company and I'm pretty certain there are no plastic fibers in our drinking water over here. The way it is filtered and analysed doesn't permit it.

However, we do have traces of antibiotics, preservatives and a widely used industrial lubricant in our drinking water. Seems worse than plastic. The lubricant is a hormone for humans, animals and plants. We don't know the impact and we can't make it disappear.

However, the situation in the USA has alarmed me a bit. When I first heard about Flint, Mi, I took it for a one-off. It isn't. There are around 4.000 places that are about as bad as Flint. And that's alarming.

Lead has been taken out of the [public] drinking water chain here. AFAIK only the town of Verviers still has lead pipes in the distribution system. Belgium has been paying a fine for it for over 25 years. But that is one place in 8.000. The USA is a bit bigger, but four thousand is a lot.

There are other numbers that are inexplicable. Like the number for "mothers dying while giving birth". It's a small number and it is very slowly going down, worldwide. Except in the USA, it's slowly going up.

When it comes to hurricanes, protection seems next to impossible. Is it? If it is, are there any ways to improve the warning and evacuation systems? One of the islands that was hit, was completely evacuated in time. Could that be a good solution in fi, Florida, too?

We're all looking to our governments to handle our worries. Is it reasonable to expect them to be able to handle anything? I don't think so.

And we're all looking at science too. But science has been corrupted too.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I didn't explain properly. Sorry.

It's not a call for political action. Any fool can see that that will fail. Far too slow, no ideas, too much corruption. It seems your president got a little help from the Russians, fi.

? way to not make it political.

Russia through a front, apparently spent >$100k on facebook ads to basically disrupt or destabilize our democratic process...  I saw one credible report that they have so far avoided campaign law legal problems by not actively supporting specific candidates.  Biased media is considering this as simply Russian help for Trump, while Russia expected Hillary to win, and mainly wanted to muddy the waters, as they do to weaken all democratic governments (no matter which side won). 

[edit] read a little more about this.. it was more like $150k spend and ads were to stir up division and controversy about hot button issues like race, gay rights, gun control, and immigration.  [/edit]

The US has historically injected ourselves into other nation's elections to influence outcomes, so we shouldn't throw too many stones while living in a glass house.

It's a call for real, direct action.

I have been writing about this right here for years. I won't repeat my full explanation but a respected group of chicago economists listed several strategies we could use to actively cool the planet, if and when needed, but we absolutely need to be very sure about what we are doing before messing with the planet on that scale. So if anything now we need more research into what is going on (the planet's temperature has always cycled between warmer and cooler being warmer than now in past times).  All the "sky is falling" temperature graphs only go back a few hundreds or thousands of years to support their "warming" story. The temperature cycles have much longer time periods. Warmer previous times would be an inconvenient truth, when manufacturing political sentiment to capture and transfer wealth.

You're creative. Invent a part of the solution.

wasting less energy is a win-win, reducing environmental stress and saving money. Super insulated homes could reduce the huge heating/cooling costs (Nordic countries are well ahead with this technology involving clean air exchange, etc).

I have personally triple insulated my house windows and have an air conditioner in my back bedroom that I haven't needed to turn on for over 2 years.  I live in MS  and cool my entire house with one airconditioner in the main room. That air conditioner/heat pump also heats the house in the winter using far less energy than my in-wall resistance heaters).  8)  I use time of day thermostats to only heat the rooms I am in, when I am in them.  ;D I should have seen lower electric bills but my local "clean" coal power plant had huge cost overruns (requiring rate increases) before switching to cheaper NG. It is still unclear how and when we will pay for this as the local regulators arm wrestle with the power company about $B of debt invested in this white elephant high tech power plant.

Plastic in the oceans is a real, objective, measured problem. A Dutch teenager came up with a wild solution, at first sight. It looks like it just might work, a year later. Watch people like Dave Hakken on youtube. His brilliant idea is that plastic isn't waste. It's a raw material, so let's re-use it. And let's create the means for anyone to do it themselves, without govt money. That just might be the turning point when it comes to plastic waste.

That's the message. It IS possible if WE do it.

Plastic waste (garbage) in the ocean is aesthetically undesirable, but pretty low on the list for objective problem priority. I'd be more worried about mercury and heavy metals from Chinese coal plants contaminating the ocean's fish stocks.

We still have humans actively killing each other, that seems like a somewhat higher priority. 

JR

 

[Matador]

Here we go again. I said a few posts ago that global warming is a very general term. Global warming and cooling is going on all the time. It was warmer in the middle ages that it is now. It has been getting warmer all the time since the last ice age. It is what led to the birth of civilisation, Thousands of years ago there was no North Sea and the UK was part of one vast European continent.  So what are you talking about?

Cheers

Ian

From the Nature Geoscience Journal in 2013:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/abs/ngeo1797.html

With a partial analysis provided here:

The Medieval Warm Period was not a global phenomenon. Warmer conditions were concentrated in certain regions. Some regions were even colder than during the Little Ice Age. To claim the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today is to narrowly focus on a few regions that showed unusual warmth. However, when we look at the broader picture, we see that the Medieval Warm Period was a regional phenomenon with other regions showing strong cooling. What is more, and as can be seen in Figure 4, globally, temperatures during the Medieval Period were less than today.
...
The PAGES 2k team found that a global surface cooling trend over the past 2,000 years has been erased by the global warming over the past century.  Current temperatures are hotter than at any time in the past 1,400 years, including during the Medieval Warm Period (Figure 5).

 

[s2udio]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h51IP3Z_A9A

 

[ruffrecords]

From the Nature Geoscience Journal in 2013:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/abs/ngeo1797.html

With a partial analysis provided here:

The PAGES 2k team found that a global surface cooling trend over the past 2,000 years has been erased by the global warming over the past century.  Current temperatures are hotter than at any time in the past 1,400 years, including during the Medieval Warm Period

And by implication it was warmer than now just over 1400 years ago and, if the cooling trend was still prevalent at that time, it must have been even warmer before that.

Cheers

Ian

 

[cyrano]

? way to not make it political.

Russia through a front, apparently spent >$100k on facebook ads to basically disrupt or destabilize our democratic process...  I saw one credible report that they have so far avoided campaign law legal problems by not actively supporting specific candidates.  Biased media is considering this as simply Russian help for Trump, while Russia expected Hillary to win, and mainly wanted to muddy the waters, as they do to weaken all democratic governments (no matter which side won). 

I know. Should've put a smilie... ;-)

The US has historically injected ourselves into other nation's elections to influence outcomes, so we shouldn't throw too many stones while living in a glass house.I have been writing about this right here for years. I won't repeat my full explanation but a respected group of chicago economists listed several strategies we could use to actively cool the planet, if and when needed, but we absolutely need to be very sure about what we are doing before messing with the planet on that scale. So if anything now we need more research into what is going on (the planet's temperature has always cycled between warmer and cooler being warmer than now in past times).  All the "sky is falling" temperature graphs only go back a few hundreds or thousands of years to support their "warming" story. The temperature cycles have much longer time periods. Warmer previous times would be an inconvenient truth, when manufacturing political sentiment to capture and transfer wealth.

That's what I'd call corruption. Corruption of data. As Matador already explained. It was hotter in some periods, but in the 13th century, IIRC, it was so cold for about 20 years (frost in august in the south of France, fi), that half of the people in Europe died. These are micro fluctuations. Not a global thing.

wasting less energy is a win-win, reducing environmental stress and saving money. Super insulated homes could reduce the huge heating/cooling costs (Nordic countries are well ahead with this technology involving clean air exchange, etc).

I have personally triple insulated my house windows and have an air conditioner in my back bedroom that I haven't needed to turn on for over 2 years.  I live in MS  and cool my entire house with one airconditioner in the main room. That air conditioner/heat pump also heats the house in the winter using far less energy than my in-wall resistance heaters).  8)  I use time of day thermostats to only heat the rooms I am in, when I am in them.  ;D I should have seen lower electric bills but my local "clean" coal power plant had huge cost overruns (requiring rate increases) before switching to cheaper NG. It is still unclear how and when we will pay for this as the local regulators arm wrestle with the power company about $B of debt invested in this white elephant high tech power plant.Plastic waste (garbage) in the ocean is aesthetically undesirable, but pretty low on the list for objective problem priority. I'd be more worried about mercury and heavy metals from Chinese coal plants contaminating the ocean's fish stocks.

Plastic is already on every beach. It's so bad that industrial processes that depend on sand, are in trouble.

Besides, plastic particles have been found in most fish stock and other marine life. In fact, every species tested so far, is affected.

We still have humans actively killing each other, that seems like a somewhat higher priority. 

It seems so. From a purely mathematical standpoint, however, it is positive. Less people is less pollution.

War and violence needs to eradicated. Biologically, it will only get worse, since there are more and more people, so stress will rise.

That's the other big problem: how to slow human reproduction. Nobody's figured that one out. Biologically it will solve itself. Every species has a built-in suicide gene...