Global warming--solutions.

Sassy · July 23, 2007, 12:53:56 AM

I think that might have been the one John posted awhile back shortly after the thread on Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" came out, don't know for sure.

Sassy · August 29, 2007, 12:21:57 PM

A Inconvenient Fact

August 29, 2007, 03:19:35 PM

QuoteA Inconvenient Fact

Amen! And right along the same lines as my old post under "Thought For the Day"

http://www.countryplans.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1144358928/100

Use more wood! Grow trees and cut 'em down!

The Southern Pine Council promotes the use of raised floors when building new (instead of building slab-on-grade. It uses more wood, good for the southern pine wood industry. They also make a point of illustrating flood insurance saving if the building is above the ground. According to their website a home raised 2 feet will have the flood insurance premium cut by more than 50%! Plus a raised house actually looks better to my eye than the houses that sit a a near ground level slab.

Then you toss in the "carbon credits" that growing more trees provide. (I use that as a figure of speech.) This is especially true if the use of more sustainably grown wood means a reduction in the use of other energy consuming materials. The production of portland cement for concrete uses large amounts of energy for example.

http://sres-associated.anu.edu.au/fpt/cfb/cement.html scroll down to the bottom....

"Cement production is one of the most energy intensive of all industrial manufacturing processes. Including direct fuel use for mining and transporting raw materials cement production takes about 6 million Btus for every tonne of cement (based on Portland Cement Association, 1990 data). The industry's heavy reliance on coal leads to especially high emission levels of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and sulphur. Most of the energy consumed is for operating the rotary kilns.

[highlight]In the U.S.A. for the approximately 80 million tons of cement used in 1992, roughly 0.6% of total energy used in the U.S.A. was required. Cement represents only about 0.06% of G.N.P. [/highlight]illustrating its energy intensiveness. "

From another source...
[highlight]• We use concrete as a material second only to water.
• For every ton of cement produced approximately one to one and a quarter
tons of carbon dioxide are produced.[/highlight]

FYI, here's a climate change calculator. According to it a ton of CO2 could be absorbed by 3 trees. Couldn't find what size. Lots of other interesting things there too.

http://www.americanforests.org/resources/ccc/

Now with all that said, here is a rebuttal (pro concrete). Certain types of concrete structures, thin shell monolithic domes in particular, can be both economical to build and very safe structures. But not something you're going to build yourself.

http://www.monolithic.com/thedome/wilson/index.html

tanya · August 29, 2007, 06:18:50 PM

The last Sunday paper had a story about airlines being the biggest contributers to global warming and they expect huge increases in air travel. I am a fan of trains myself and I do not understand why our airline industry is given tax dollars to keep itself afloat and they refuse to support the trains. I know trains take a lot longer but they ave the technology now to make the faster trains and they could build them right above the existing freight trains spaces so it wouldn't take much more room. There are new technoligies for electric and magnetic trains and the terrorist factor is reduced considerably because even though there is a lot more area to watch on the ground they can be monitired by electronics. That is just one area tht can be improved upon with substantial results. Another is telecommuting. Most of the work desk jobs entail is easily done from a home office or over the phone why do these people have to spend precious time and resources driving to work and back every single day. I know if I were the boss if I couldn't trust my workers to get the job done no matter where they worked I wouldn't trust them with the job at all. Just my thoughts onthis whole global warming thing. I also think hemp is the fastest growing renewable resource we have available and this country better move quickly to get that industry moving ahead because the trees are going fast and from what I hear concrete is pretty hard to get in this part of the country at times.

MountainDon · August 29, 2007, 08:03:32 PM

High speed train travel excels in short hauls, up to 150 miles. It may even be advantageous for trips of up to 400 miles, when airport check-in, security check, etc. times are taken into account. So, if the US had a better, more widely available high speed rail system in the most populated areas there could be some great advantages. You still have to get to & from the train though. However, I don't believe trains will ever catch on here for longer distance travel.

Warren Buffet believes in train freight. His Berkshire Hathaway company just bought a large number of shares in the Santa Fe Burlington Northern RR. Freight trains make a lot of sense for long distance, not time-critical shipments.

[I also don't believe the federal government should prop up failing enterprises. That extends to subsidies of all kinds; farm, industrial, mortgages, etc.]

Concrete, or rather the cement that is one of the components of concrete, has been subject to world wide shortages, and price increases for a number of years now. Mostly this is due to the building boom in the People's Republic of China. Locally here in NM, there have even been times when redi-mix transit concrete has been subject to daily quotas because of the shortfall in the cement. That's even with having one of the approx. 200 US Portland Cement plants on the edge of town.

Mainland China's building boom is also responsible for sharp increases in the world's supply of steel.

FYI, 60% of the world's available construction cranes are currently in China, most of them in Shanghai. As of the end of 2005, Shanghai had 15,000 buildings over 18 stories tall, and they are still building. Mind boggling.

Information from The Society of American Foresters indicates the number of acres of forestland in the United States has remained essentially the same during the past century. As well the standing inventory (the volume of growing stock) of hardwood and softwood tree species in US forests has grown by 49 percent between 1953 and 2006.

The SAF has a website http://www.safnet.org/aboutforestry/index.cfm The full report can be downloaded by clicking on the View the Online Report link in the first paragraph.

August 29, 2007, 08:13:20 PM

Lots of good info, MtnDon!

MountainDon · August 29, 2007, 09:17:31 PM

There certainly are a number of jobs that could be done via telecommuting. Some already are.

My brother-in-law has been telecommuting for over six years now. He's a district manager for a large global conglomerate. He works from his upstairs home office wearing shorts and sandals most of the time. He does have to keep more or less normal hours because he has business contacts over a wide area. The company saves on commercial office space. He has a company vehicle but the mileage use is way down. He personally can save on clothes and has more real personal time. He does have to dress in a suit at times, mostly to receive company brass or make calls on retail clients along with their sales rep. Great thing!

There are a lot of jobs though, that on the surface could be done from home, but probably won't be because of information security concerns. I have some background in banking and customer service. It would seem that this sort of job could be done from an American workers home just as well as from a call center, especially a call center in India. [The bank I worked for do not utilize any out of the country service centers for its US customer base.]

I would never want to see anyone in a job like this, with access to all my personal information working from other than a secure central location. As it is, employee misuse of company resources and customer information is a problem throughout the telephone customer service industry; cell phones, catalog sales, mortgages, insurance carriers, credit card companies, government offices (some of the worst unsecured places), you name it. Please don't be alarmed and immediately pull your money out of the banks and put it in a sock under the mattress.

The bank I worked for had extremely tight security in its centers. Paper was not even used for making temporary notes. Either the Windows notepad or something similar was used; it could not be saved or printed. Cell phones, PDA's etc were not allowed on the work desk. Computer workstations would record if a floppy disk or USB flash memory was inserted.

Heck, every second not spent speaking to a client is recorded. When the recorded voice at the beginning of the call says the call may be recorded... they are not kidding. A large number of calls would be monitored... both the conversation and all the screen activity. It can be watched like a video, real time or recorded. Yes, very Big Brotherish, but the security of your information is at stake. In an off site location there could be no security of the information.

If you've ever wondered about who it is who counts the money you deposited in the ATM, it's done on a clean table in a sterile secure room, one item at a time, by two people and recorded by a video system. The local bank emplyees never see the inside of the ATM.

FYI, a few years ago there were over 2 million telephone customer service reps in the USA. Most employed by insurance carriers, insurance agencies and brokerages, and banks and credit unions. Four States—California, Texas, Florida, and New York—employ 30 percent of customer service representatives. Delaware, Arizona, South Dakota, and Utah, have the highest concentration of workers in this occupation.

Security of information, BTW, is why I feel more secure in making purchases over the Internet. The order is handled by the computer system. The people there will never see anything other than what you ordered and how you want it shipped. The credit card info remains blocked from their access. Of course, you have to hope that the company itself is doing all it can to safeguard your information. Even if you only deal in person in a brick and mortar store you have to have the same trust if you use credit cards or personal checks.

Another FYI, did you know that a store like Home Depot can use your credit card number to check back months to see what you've purchased. This can be done by those trained in processing customer returns and special orders, not necessarily by a checkout cashier. It is handy if you can't find the receipt for something you want to return. Even without the paper, if they can find the item in your purchase record it's as good as having the receipt (depending on how service oriented the employee is.) . I imagine the same things might apply at many other establishments.

MountainDon · August 29, 2007, 11:14:34 PM

A final note on cement. (from a cement industry paper)

The cement manufacturing industry contributes about 5% of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

To make matters worse, the chemistry of cement-making results in as much carbon-dioxide as the energy used to make it.

benevolance · August 30, 2007, 06:51:44 PM

Sassy I believe that there are cycles of weather...It is not something that people should doubt really unless you do not believe that there have been ice ages...

The one thing about global warming that does scare me is that even with 6.5 billion people the world the stratosphere is a unbelievably enormous place. We have been massivley polluting the world for 400 years since the start of the Industrial revolution...Burning massive amounts of fossil fuels.

I do not believe what we are seeing now is a cycle that is natural because there is no evidence of a warming trend that you can point to that goes back 100 years. major weather patterns shifts and cycles are something that take hundreds and hundreds of years to complete...

we are seeing rapid warming of the planet..Much too quick to be a cycle or pattern... remember that we have been keeping accurate notes of the weather for thousands of years and we have not experienced anything like this

What this is (in my opinion) is the net result of the build up of pollution and carbon emissions from industry combined with the reduction of forest cover on the planet.

We need to think of this like the earth had no air that was breatheable... If this was the case and you had little groups of trees in Glass domes producing oxygen it would take tens of thousands of year to get the air to accumulate so we could breathe it naturally.... If there was millions of Domes with trees in them covering half the world producing air it would still take a long time to make enough for us to breathe...Perhaps a couple hundred years...

I use this analogy because this is how the warming effect of carbon is changing our world...We started 400 years ago to spew out pollution from fossil fuels..It has gotten worse and worse and now that we are really churning it out at a unfathomable rate for the last 100 years or more...we are seeing a change in the environment because of it.

Tomorrow we could eliminate all pollution and all carbon emissions by man and it would take generations for balance to be reached and for the barometer to see any relief.

The world is so big and there is so much air that the amount of pollution that was needed to change the weather is much higher than anyone has calculated...And the recovery time is going to be much longer as well.

that is once we stop polluting

and replant the trees we have cut down

August 30, 2007, 08:33:51 PM

What about the chemical spraying from airplanes? The weather manipulation that goes on? HAARP & other centers around the world that use electromagnetic forces to super heat the plasma in the ionosphere? You don't think that is having a lot of effect on the weather? China alone has 35,000 people whose job is to shoot chemicals into the atmosphere to effect the weather - they are planning on making sure there is no rain during the Olympics to spoil things.

Weather manipulation has been going on since the early 1950's... Super heating the plasma in the ionosphere... no one knows what the long range effects are to our weather & atmosphere... :-/ spraying all kinds of chemicals from airplanes - microscopic aluminum to reflect the suns rays... I could go on & on - there are lots of places you can read about these things - I've listed links on several of the threads here in "off-topics"

I was at a trauma conference today & the speaker - he speaks internationally, goes to 3rd world countries (was just filmed by National Geographic - show will play in fall; last year Discovery Channel filmed him when the group drove the "Road of Death"... ) anyway, he mentioned that his younger brother had been shot several times in Iraq - he had been at Walter Reed hospital for a month & now he was in septic shock...

I was talking to him during the break - he'd just gotten a call that his brother was doing a bit better... anyway, we'd been discussing "terrorism & catastrophic accidents" & he'd lectured on gunshot wounds & radiologic exposure. Several types of spent bullets were passed around for us to look at, including an armor piercing round. I asked him if he'd seen many patients with sicknesses caused by depleted uranium (DU) - he wasn't even familiar with DU. I started telling him about it. Right now there is a congressman that is trying to pass a bill that will make sure everyone who has served with the military in the Middle East gets screened for exposure to radiation. He seemed very interested... I was surprised that he wasn't familiar - he has been on international research boards for trauma... (the bullets are coated in DU)

Don't you think that all the pollution from DU is effecting the weather? Not to mention people's health...

tanya · August 31, 2007, 09:48:43 PM

Depleted uranium is new to me to but I do remember hearing something about it awhile back. I didn't know they were coating bullets withthe stuff though that is very scary because once that war is over then guess who is left to find those casings, as in all wars, the small curious children. No goo d is ever going to come of that war and I can't help but wonder if anyone is even still looking for Bin Laden. All I hear is IRaq, Iraq, Iraq, shouldn't we be gettin gafganistant in order by now? Let those damn Iraqi's take care of their own damn dumasses. They let that tyrant rule for many years they should have to face up to that. Ok that is my rant as for global warming, yes we do have the same amount of trees available as there were int he early 1950's BUT that was during the height of the timber/logging industry since that time we have learned that we have to keep that many trees AT LEAST growning jsut to try to protect the watersheds and even that isn't working very well. The watersheds are in serious trouble and it has been my experience that one thing that really gets people upset is lack of water, particularly good clean drinking water. The reason I support the hemp farming is bcause the hemp can refresh the mountains and the watersheds in a very short time, it is a weed that can live with very little water while the roots break up the hard packed earth and mulch to increase the soil health. The hemp is also a useful product for fibers, building products, and oils. Don't get me wrong here though I do not support bio fuel plans, they take more resources than they save. NO the world has to come to grps with solar and wind energy and maybe the hydrogen cells ( I don't know much about hydrogen cells so I am not sure about aht) I do know that a household can live quite well with solar and/or wind these days though even here in the far north. Every little thing we do helps and if every person does every little thing they can to stop the fossil fuels burning then we can save this planet, maybe. I think it is horrible that we have sent young people to war and spent billions of dollars to support a foriegn industry that is failing, that hates our country, that ruins our world, and we do not insist that the government take action to get people off the fossil fuels addiction and onto some healthier power supplies. yes cars will continue to run on fuels but the new hybrids are wonderful, I was doubtful but they bought one where I worked and I drove it and I loved that car, it did just fine ont he big hills and mountain passes we have here better than many gas guzzlers. We can also do a lot more with public transit and our environment.

benevolance · August 31, 2007, 09:53:18 PM

Bio fuel might be feasible if they would make an efficient fuel... Ethanol only produces 85% of the BTU or energy per gallon compared to gasoline... Butanol is the Biofuel we need to look at making...It gives 130% per gallon of Energy compared to Gasoline...

And in the process of making it the by product is pure useable hydrogen for fuel cells and such

tanya · August 31, 2007, 10:00:53 PM

See that is a good answer to that bio fuel debate. I hope someone gets that figured out, that ethanol is going to be the next big waste of taxpayers dollars.

glenn kangiser · August 31, 2007, 11:51:42 PM

Answer to all of the above is follow the money.

Hydrogen cells are currently a joke -- powered by fossil fuel - hydrocarbons -- so expensive no one will be able to afford them. No infrastructure to support them. They are an oil industry charade to make the gullible 95% of the population think they are actually really doing something. A smokescreen..

Our children dying in an unjust power and oil war = New $2.6 million home for Cheney. Rummy there first at only $1.5 million. I guess Cheney doesn't mind slumming as long as it's his old buddy, Rummy. Hope they get their new neighbor. No worries. Big Dick's daughter doesn't like boys anyway. Come to think of it MJ doesn't like girls. :-/

http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/05/1970438.htm

Biofuel advances - real advances - not as long as the oil boys control the gov.

Some info from here. http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8037737380004144726&q=who+killed+electric+car&total=209&start=0&num=50&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Serious breakthroughs on running IC engines on hydrogen - water hydrogen/oxygen, end in death.

http://www.waterpoweredcar.com/stanmeyer.html

We are not free to do such things, so sorry to keep things from looking rosy in the near future.

September 01, 2007, 10:59:15 AM

I read somewhere that BC Canada had their fleet running on hydrogen cells and that it was working out very well for them. Even the bigger trucks and stuff were on the Hhydrogen cells. I can't remember where I read it but I think it might have been on a google search for hydrogen cells cars. I don't trust the corporate structure in our country so I always look to see what the other country's are doing too. I know that explosions were a big reason the cars were not working out early on but I think they came up with some help for that. All the technology is so new that of course it willt ake some refinning but I jsut hope that they get something going or at least improve the public transit systems accross the nation. I know I can take a train to Seattle and back for about $100 that is about what it costs me to drive without the wear and tear on my car and me being a country girl driving in city traffic, it makes it worth it to not take my car. BUT if I take the kids or others along then there is no savings taking the train it actually costs a lot more than drivng. I do believe public transit should be heavily subsidized when people can save $$$ taking public transit they will use it. When they cannot save $$ they will continue to use their own vehicles and that actually costs taxpayers more than subsidiing the transit systems, in road repairs, extra patrols, global warming and just plain chaos on so much traffic on the roads. If you could take a train or bus for $10 anywhere in the state and $100 anywhere in the nation people would be parking their cars and taking the transit. I don't think it would affect the automobile industry to much either because people would still want to own a car for those weekend trips and after hours travel. I bet it would put a dent in the oil industry's pocket though. IF they can keep the costs down more people will choose to travel bus or train than air too and that can really help with the global warming issue. Right now they are considering adding additional fees to air travel to help withthe global warming issue but additional fees don't help anything allt hey do is make it harder for people to go anywhere and raise the costs of living accross the board more green options for travel is what we need.

glenn kangiser · September 01, 2007, 11:28:01 AM

Quoteadditional fees to air travel to help with the global warming issue[highlight][/highlight]

The key to the issue of global warming -- follow the money.

It is another scam to extract millions of dollars from the - "I don't know what it is but if you say it is so take my money and protect me from it" --Sheeple

The government and big business are well aware of how to separate us from our money.

benevolance · September 01, 2007, 03:04:22 PM

What I love personally is the scientific reports that have been released lately showing how plants and animals are making green house gases.

Last week there was a story on how the elk and reindeer in Greenland were causing green house gas... I have seen stories about dairy cattle and methane as well.

Trying to create a spin that says "oil, coal, automobiles are not responsible for the climate changes.."

This is a very dangerous and disturbing trend...What are the people to do...Cover the arctic wipe out all the caribou elk and reindeer so we can drive more SUV's and not totally screw the environment?

Sassy · September 01, 2007, 11:54:26 PM

http://www.dailytech.com/Survey%2BLess%2BThan%2BHalf%2Bof%2Ball%2BPublished%2BScientists%2BEndorse%2BGlobal%2BWarming%2BTheory/article8641.htm
Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory

"Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.

Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of "90% likely" man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of "thousands of scientists" involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of "lead authors." The introductory [highlight]"Summary for Policymakers" -- the only portion usually quoted in the media -- is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters -- the only text actually written by scientists -- are edited to "ensure compliance" with the summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself."[/highlight]

MountainDon · September 03, 2007, 03:52:18 PM

Interesting, Sassy. Confirms where I stand; not convinced that GW is the end of the world as we know it. But I do believe in wise use of resources, cars that get us better fuel mileage, etc. But without proof I am hesitant to jump on the bandwagon. No science is ever done by consensus anyway. Science requires proofs, not opinions, extrapolation and conjecture.

I believe that government can do nothing better than private industry. If government does anything it is bound to cost more in the end. Why? Because there is no motive for government to do it better; no motive to do it economically or efficiently. Any task private industry tackles (capitalism if you will) is done solely to make a profit while providing a service or product. That is true whether the company is an individual self employed person or a multi billion dollar a year publicly traded corporation responsible to its shareholders. There can be bad apples at both ends of the spectrum, but given time things will shake out and honest businesses/corporation will shine

The only thing government is better at is picking our pockets with an increasing array of hidden and visible taxes, increasing the size of the bureaucracy and making war.

Government gets all its money from our individual pockets. If the government subsidizes anything the money comes out of our individual pockets. If it's not clear by now, I am against government subsidies of any kind, as much as I'm against the ever increasing myriad rules government imposes on our personal and our small business lives.

Sassy · September 03, 2007, 04:10:28 PM

Capitalism/free market is good - it is when gov't interferes by subsidizing & bailing out those businesses. The free market should determine who will make it & who won't.

There should be guidelines but in our day & age, there are rules, restrictions, fees, taxes, etc etc on everything we do. It's getting to the point that the independent business is run over by the gov't controlled mafia. :-/

MountainDon · September 03, 2007, 04:34:54 PM

QuoteCapitalism/free market is good - it is when gov't interferes by subsidizing & bailing out those businesses. The free market should determine who will make it & who won't.

Couldn't say it better myself, Sassy!

I am waiting to see how this mortgage crisis thing works out... yes, it would be terrible to loose a home because the ARM ran out and the new rate broke your wallet. But as far as I'm concerned nobody should buy a home, or whatever else, unless they know for certain how they are going to pay for it.

I am totally sympathetic to folks who suffer a personal catastrophe not their fault; health, death, unexpected job loss, stuff like that. But no sympathy here for those who purchase beyond their needs and abilities or who purchase upon speculation.

benevolance · September 03, 2007, 06:22:46 PM

don

They have come up with a new method of producing Butanol and part of the process is generation of Pure hydrogen for Fuel cells... it is formed from the waste and I think if I remember correctly as much as 15% hydrogen is produced for every part butanol.

And it would be cheaper to produce than Ethanol... So you get more energy out of it than ethanol...It is cheaper, and you get signifigant amounts of hydrogen that can be used in clean technologies to eliminate fossil fuel use and pollution.

No wonder the government stonewalled Butanol and is pushing ethanol

benevolance · September 03, 2007, 06:26:01 PM

people also need to understand that not much of anything needs to be done by way of modification to cars to run butanol...ethanol will corrode fuel tank and lines and older cars will not run on it easily... Butanol is something you can pour in the lawnmower, the 4x4 or your 30,000 car... no modifications needed... This truly makes it a winner as an alternative fuel source as people get an alternative clean fuel and they do not have to buy anything or do anything to their cars to get it...

benevolance · September 03, 2007, 06:31:35 PM

Oh and btw... Butanol is clean...

No Noz and Sox emissions from it...And it reduces the CO2 levels by over half. Overall hydrocarbon emissions are reduced by over 95% compared to burning gasoline.

yes folks it is that clean...and you do not need to buy a $30,000 prius to go green... just get in the old clunker... drive to the pump and fill er up.

Cost per gallon of Butanol is $1.35 a gallon to make...So there is all kinds of room for the government to tax us to death on it and make their money.

We talked about the Hydrogen by product from making butanol through the biomass production method... One other thing of note...The waste biomass after making butanol can be used to make natural fertilizer, or even feedstock

So all around it is a win win for the environment...

BTW, for those out there who would reply that butanol stinks: it doesn't. Butyric acid stinks, and is part of the old method of producing butanol. The new method doesn't involve butyric acid -- and the final product, butanol, smells sweet.

www.butanol.com

Global warming--solutions.

Sassy

MountainDon

Sassy

MountainDon

MountainDon

benevolance

benevolance

benevolance