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climate change times are a changin'

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Re: climate change times are a changin'

dxmnkd316 said:
Interesting. I guess I had never even considered that could put that big of a dent in the concentration. Thanks.
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I read an article that indicated that 1/4 of all annual industrial emissions of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] are absorbed by new growth in the Amazon rainforest, and another 1/4 are absorbed by the rest of the world's rainforests.

Which makes me wonder whether "zealots" about "human-caused global warming" care at all about solving the problem or not. there is a tyrannical obsession with limiting emissions; yet the obvious data (new growth on trees reduces atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB]) is totally ignored.

Seriously, if atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB] really is the problem, what practical difference does it make whether we reduce emissions, or increase the rate of removal of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from the atmosphere? Shouldn't they be totally 100% equivalent, given the formulation of the problem?

The blindness toward one solution and the rigid insistence toward the other raise serious questions about whether solving the problem is truly the goal at all.....
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

geezer said:
If, like me, you're somewhat uninformed and slow on the uptake, today's On Point was very interesting, lots of good interviews regarding the Clean Power Plan, European power production, etc. In related commentary, a column on why coal has been losing so much market share.
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More means vs ends debate. For some of us, tyranny is never a solution, no matter how "right" or how "benign" the totalitarian believes him/herself to be.

If the market is truly killing off coal, as Bloomberg asserts, then the EPA action is not only unnecessary but harmful, as it short-circuits the process by changing the terms of the debate so drastically. Whatever merits the EPA plan might have are totally dwarfed by the manner in which it is being imposed.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

FreshFish said:
I read an article that indicated that 1/4 of all annual industrial emissions of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] are absorbed by new growth in the Amazon rainforest, and another 1/4 are absorbed by the rest of the world's rainforests.

Which makes me wonder whether "zealots" about "human-caused global warming" care at all about solving the problem or not. there is a tyrannical obsession with limiting emissions; yet the obvious data (new growth on trees reduces atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB]) is totally ignored.

Seriously, if atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB] really is the problem, what practical difference does it make whether we reduce emissions, or increase the rate of removal of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from the atmosphere? Shouldn't they be totally 100% equivalent, given the formulation of the problem?

The blindness toward one solution and the rigid insistence toward the other raise serious questions about whether solving the problem is truly the goal at all.....
Click to expand...

But isn't deforestation still accelerating almost everywhere?* "New growth on trees" and "free market" are at odds.
One interesting thing in the NPR story is that while Germany has somewhere around 1/4 - 1/3 renewable power (while shutting down nuclear), most of that is coming from "biofuels" i.e. they are shaving northern Finland clean in order to burn wood to replace coal and nuclear. I've heard that second-growth forest doesn't store nearly the amount of carbon that old-growth does so if you're on a harvesting schedule somewhere like the taiga, you're drastically reducing the ongoing storage capacity even though it's "renewable."
Having said that, burning wood beats burning fossil fuels on carbon cycling. It takes a much longer time to grow more oil.
*serious question; does anyone have a good source?
 
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FreshFish said:
I read an article that indicated that 1/4 of all annual industrial emissions of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] are absorbed by new growth in the Amazon rainforest, and another 1/4 are absorbed by the rest of the world's rainforests.

Which makes me wonder whether "zealots" about "human-caused global warming" care at all about solving the problem or not. there is a tyrannical obsession with limiting emissions; yet the obvious data (new growth on trees reduces atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB]) is totally ignored.

Seriously, if atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB] really is the problem, what practical difference does it make whether we reduce emissions, or increase the rate of removal of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from the atmosphere? Shouldn't they be totally 100% equivalent, given the formulation of the problem?

The blindness toward one solution and the rigid insistence toward the other raise serious questions about whether solving the problem is truly the goal at all.....
Click to expand...

Unless you can build a machine that can efficiently capture the CO2 from the air and pump it back down the wells that it came up from your going to end up with a horrible storage problem in a hurry.

Rapidly growing trees take up CO2, old growth trees store carbon, and dead trees release carbon.

CO2 sequesteration has 2 major issues, the energy required to separate the CO2 from the rest of the air, and how to store the resulting output.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

Almington said:
Unless you can build a machine that can efficiently capture the CO2 from the air and pump it back down the wells that it came up from your going to end up with a horrible storage problem in a hurry.

Rapidly growing trees take up CO2, old growth trees store carbon, and dead trees release carbon.

CO2 sequesteration has 2 major issues, the energy required to separate the CO2 from the rest of the air, and how to store the resulting output.
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I tried...I really did...to explain that to him earlier in the thread but he seems pretty attached to that talking point.

He also got snarky about me using the word "sequestration," calling me a sesquipedalian IIRC.

Good luck :)
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

geezer said:
But isn't deforestation still accelerating almost everywhere?* "New growth on trees" and "free market" are at odds.
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Not necessarily, it would be far cheaper to purchase forestation rights than it would be to reduce emissions; and we haven't even unleashed market forces at all yet; the controversy has shifted entirely away from solving the problem.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

Almington said:
Unless you can build a machine that can efficiently capture the CO2 from the air and pump it back down the wells that it came up from your going to end up with a horrible storage problem in a hurry.

Rapidly growing trees take up CO2, old growth trees store carbon, and dead trees release carbon.

CO2 sequesteration has 2 major issues, the energy required to separate the CO2 from the rest of the air, and how to store the resulting output.
Click to expand...

Dead trees release carbon? does that mean that the beams of my house are slowly disintegrating? :eek:

The lumber industry must be shocked, shocked to hear such a thing.....


You haven't ventured into the relative cost section. All the issues you raise are nascent, technology is just getting started. If you let people make money on it, you'll see tremendous advances in a big hurry.

What's wrong with an either / or approach?? "Either you reduce emissions by x tons of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] annually, OR you remove an incremental additional CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from the atmosphere annually, or pick any combination of the two."


and if coal is so noxious, why not allow innovation in nuclear? all our designs / regulatory concerns / etc. are locked into technologies that are 30 years out of date. Completely new techniques are now available yet regulators won't even acknowledge their existence.


Goes back to the original question: what is the priority, actually solving the problem, or insisting that there is only one possible solution that everyone must follow to the exclusion of all else?
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

FreshFish said:
and if coal is so noxious, why not allow innovation in nuclear? all our designs / regulatory concerns / etc. are locked into technologies that are 30 years out of date. Completely new techniques are now available yet regulators won't even acknowledge their existence.


Goes back to the original question: what is the priority, actually solving the problem, or insisting that there is only one possible solution that everyone must follow to the exclusion of all else?
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I don't think that is an accurate assessment of regulators at all. In fact in my home state it is on the table and being discussed. The problem, at least here, is that the costs to build a new reactor outweigh the benefits to the power company vis a vis other options, so they have been looking elsewhere. Absent govt subsidies of some sort, the costs are not going to go down.
 
manurespreader said:
I don't think that is an accurate assessment of regulators at all. In fact in my home state it is on the table and being discussed. The problem, at least here, is that the costs to build a new reactor outweigh the benefits to the power company vis a vis other options, so they have been looking elsewhere. Absent govt subsidies of some sort, the costs are not going to go down.
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So how does France do it? Subsidies?
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

FreshFish said:
Dead trees release carbon? does that mean that the beams of my house are slowly disintegrating? :eek:

The lumber industry must be shocked, shocked to hear such a thing.....
Click to expand...

Uh... it's the dead trees that are outside that are rotting. Moisture has a lot to do with supporting fungal activity.
But you're right that building with wood (as opposed to steel and concrete which are more energy intensive to produce and don't store carbon) is environmentally friendly, in a drop in the bucket kind of way.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

A co-founder of Greenpeace has his say:

The fashionable tendency to blame every change in climate and every extreme-weather event on human emissions is doing a grave disservice to the scientific tradition. We know that the climate has been changing for millions of years due to a multitude of perfectly natural factors. There is no reason to believe that those factors have suddenly disappeared and now humans are the all-powerful shapers of global climate destiny. Yet this entirely unproven hypothesis of catastrophe is compelling to those who would control our beliefs.

Politicians want us to believe they are saving us from ruin; religious leaders want to reinforce original sin and the need for repentance; some business leaders want us to subsidize their expensive “green” technologies; and the climate activists want their money-machine to keep on giving.

This powerful convergence of interests ignores the fact that carbon dioxide is essential for all life on Earth, that plants could use a lot more of it, and that the real threat is a cooling of the climate, not the slight warming that has occurred over the past 300 years.
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Re: climate change times are a changin'

Not sure if I agree with everything here, though he does raise some important points that should be included in the overall discussion.

[Pledging billions of dollars to fight climate change] effectively means telling the world’s worst-off people, suffering from tuberculosis, malaria or malnutrition, that what they really need isn’t medicine, mosquito nets or micronutrients, but a solar panel.

aid is being diverted to climate-related matters at the expense of improved public health, education and economic development. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has analyzed about 70% of total global development aid and found that about one in four of those dollars goes to climate-related aid.

In a world in which malnourishment continues to claim at least 1.4 million children’s lives each year, 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty, and 2.6 billion lack clean drinking water and sanitation, this growing emphasis on climate aid is immoral.

in an online U.N. survey of more than eight million people from around the globe, respondents from the world’s poorest countries rank “action taken on climate change” dead last out of 16 categories when asked “What matters most to you?” Top priorities are “a good education,” “better health care, “better job opportunities,” “an honest and responsive government,” and “affordable, nutritious food.”

Addressing global warming effectively will require long-term innovation that will make green energy affordable for everyone. Rich countries are in a rush to appear green and generous, and recipient countries are jostling to make sure they receive the funds. But the truth is that climate aid isn’t where rich countries can help the most, and it isn’t what the world’s poorest want or need.
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Re: climate change times are a changin'

FreshFish said:
Not sure if I agree with everything here, though he does raise some important points that should be included in the overall discussion.
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JFC that is one of the worst arguments I've heard. Pure concern trolling.

Besides, you know what is going to **** over our world's food supply most in the next 100 years? Climate change. My God that is one of the ****tiest arguments I've heard yet. I think this is the point where I really hop on the idea that the WSJ has turned to pure journalistic garbage. I don't get beyond the paywall, but I can tell you already it would probably be one of the most myopic arguments I've seen coming from one of the nation's biggest papers.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

dxmnkd316 said:
JFC that is one of the worst arguments I've heard. Pure concern trolling.

Besides, you know what is going to **** over our world's food supply most in the next 100 years? Climate change. My God that is one of the ****tiest arguments I've heard yet. I think this is the point where I really hop on the idea that the WSJ has turned to pure journalistic garbage. I don't get beyond the paywall, but I can tell you already it would probably be one of the most myopic arguments I've seen coming from one of the nation's biggest papers.
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Never mind the fact there isn't a GOP leader alive that has any intention of funneling $US toward, "improved public health, education and economic development" in the 3rd world.
 
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