Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Forests and carbon capture
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#26
(02-15-2019, 07:52 PM)Labster Wrote: I really need to stop reading this thread because you all are making me angry.  If I took the time to explain why all of these ideas don't work, or are generally harmful to the biosphere I'd be here all day.  I'm an expert in this field, and I don't have any bright ideas either.

Question Lab. Solar panels on housing. I've been wondering if I should bug my landlord about looking into the government rebate on it down here. Would you know if the output/en result is worth the initial investment?
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#27
It depends a lot on where you live, and I forget where you are. If you're in Hawaii, do it nao!!!11! If you're in Michigan, it might not be all that cost effective. If you're in Alaska, maybe a brand new coal plant is the right choice?

It's not just based on latitude; California is a friendlier environment for solar than Alabama from both tax incentives and regulations. But over the last 2 years incentives have been getting smaller while the tariffs have increased the price of solar panels. California requires net metering on its utilities, and so you get better rates here as you'll tend to produce more when there's a surplus of power. But with the advent of Community Choice Energy, local utility brokers will likely give you better deals for clean energy than the big utilities, so it also depends on where you live in the state.

One of the things that you need to be aware of is that a third-party owner like Sunrun will likely be more expensive than buying from utilities. It also creates problems if you have to sell a property or make repairs to the roof, because they are leasing the property from you. You can expect 10-15 year payback from solar in the southern US, but not if you're letting a third party own the panels.

Sorry, I don't really know all that much about this, my education is in climatology, not the engineering side of it.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#28
Also; buy local and seasonal produce. Seriously.

Generally speaking fresh food has to be flown in. And yes, this means that in more temperate/colder zones there's a good chance you need to eat preserved vegetables at least some of the time.
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#29
It also helps to support smaller, local, often family-owned farms, which often also tend to less pesticides and so on, so you win in multiple ways. Not least of which is how good the food on your table ends up being, since big agro tends to use cultivars that are optimized for looks and shelf life rather than taste and texture. This tends to be especially noticeable in garlic, tomatoes, and bell peppers, from my experience, which can make the sauce on spaghetti and meatballs night an eye-popping experience the first time you try making it from farmers' market produce.
--
‎noli esse culus
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#30
(02-15-2019, 10:40 PM)Labster Wrote: It depends a lot on where you live, and I forget where you are.  If you're in Hawaii, do it nao!!!11!  If you're in Michigan, it might not be all that cost effective.  If you're in Alaska, maybe a brand new coal plant is the right choice?

I'd rather not see any more coal plants, please. This thread is all about carbon capture, not carbon intensification...
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#31
Designing cities to be more walkable, better mass transportation systems, and better land use and zonification. National guidelines perhaps?
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”

— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#32
Add some bicycle accessibility to the plan for things inconveniently far to walk but not far enough to be worth waiting around for and spending money on public transit, maybe? Or with cargo trays/saddlebags/etc. for transporting moderate amounts of goods like the weekly groceries and so on. If there's a way to give routes protection from extreme weather even better, which is at least as much a concern for making cities walkable anyway.
--
‎noli esse culus
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#33
(02-16-2019, 10:46 AM)robkelk Wrote:
(02-15-2019, 10:40 PM)Labster Wrote: It depends a lot on where you live, and I forget where you are.  If you're in Hawaii, do it nao!!!11!  If you're in Michigan, it might not be all that cost effective.  If you're in Alaska, maybe a brand new coal plant is the right choice?

I'd rather not see any more coal plants, please. This thread is all about carbon capture, not carbon intensification...

If you'd read the article, you'd would see that it was the right choice in this case.  In Fairbanks, Alaska, where you have not much wind, zero insolation for months, and hydro would freeze.  No nearby sources of nat gas or pipelines, but hey, there's a coal mine really close.  Ideally for these remote places you could get nuclear power, but we don't have a permitting process that would make small nuclear plants affordable.

Trends have outliers; plans have complications.  You can't just ignore data you don't like, because there are real people behind those numbers.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#34
Also, it will be relatively trivial to convert to a biomatter plant later on.
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#35
So, it can be switched from burning something to burning something else? Again, this thread is all about carbon capture, not carbon intensification.

Would geothermal power work in Alaska? would wind power work? Is there any place along the coasts where tidal power would work?
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#36
Biomatter plants can be rendered carbon neutral, and given it's Alaska fuel can be sourced fairly close by.

For powering Fairbanks?

The closest volcano is some 100 kilometers form Fairbanks and was active in the Holocene, but was last active some 3000 years ago. It is possible that any magma that could be used to draw geothermal power from is too deep currently to be used, or at least cost effective use.

Winds do not blow strongly enough to power Fairbanks, and the nearest coast is some 400 kilometers away.

Sometimes there really are no better options. Unless the US figures out a way to finance a nuclear power plant for some 100 000 people using a coal fired power plant using coal sourced from the nearby coal mine really is the best option short of not powering the place at all. Or, you know, make the investment for a wood fueled power plant instead.
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#37
Since this is the carbon capture thread, I figure its the best place to ask this question.

How do Bo-fuel powered boilers factor into the carbon capture/release scenario
Wolf wins every fight but the one where he dies, fangs locked around the throat of his opponent. 
Currently writing BROBd

Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#38
Stronger on the "not releasing sulfur/radioactivity/etc." front than carbon, since you are still burning stuff for heat. It's just that the stuff you're burning hasn't needed a few million years composting underground first. How the whole process to get it to the tank stacks up in terms of energy efficiency and environmental impact compared to traditional fuels I don't really even know how to begin to research beyond seeing what google can dig up.
--
‎noli esse culus
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#39
Carbon neutral at best because of the reasons Drogn gave.

Strictly speaking the entire resource chain could run on biofuels where necessary, like with hauling, and otherwise run on wind/hydro/solar/geothermal.
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#40
Which brings up another question: Can the environment afford solutions that are only "carbon neutral"?

I know that carbon reduction means not heating places that need the heat in order for people to survive. Some folks may need to make sacrifices, including moving from their homelands.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#41
The environment?

Yes.

Do not make the mistake of presuming the environment won't survive this change. Do not make the mistake of presuming life won't survive this change. Do not make the mistake of presuming the Earth won't survive this change.

All these things have seen shifts like this before and survived. Changed, adapted, but survived.

It's humanity I'm less certain of.

And modern day society even more so.

It is us, not the environment, that needs a rapid net reduction in carbon dioxide production, and it is us, not the environment, that would greatly benefit from a decrease in the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#42
I just now realized how bad a statement "save the environment" is. The environment is just the current state, which is always changing. There will always be an environment, whether a living thing is alive to see it or not.

But the biosphere in the long-term can support a few things which generate carbon dioxide. The severity of the anthropocene event is mainly that it's happening much faster than natural selection. If we were really in the realm of natural variability there wouldn't be much to worry about. But there are things we call ecosystem services, like plant growth and carbonate compensation that can handle a decent amount of carbon emissions, on the >200 year scale. In fact, that was kind of the story of the pleistocene into the holocene, where most carbon dioxide events like volcanoes were absorbed quickly enough.

On the short term, though, the biosphere can really only afford carbon-negative solutions, as we're already in a mass extinction event. Obviously we don't have those, so yeah, we need to get to carbon neutral as fast as possible. We kind of used up our cushion in the 1990s and 2000s, and chose the route where more people die. Oh wells, water under the bridge now.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#43
this seems appropriate, specifically at the 2:30 mark

Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#44
And that right there is one of the best arguments I have ever heard to disprove the idea that global warming/climate change is man made. Forget the science for a minute and realize the arrogance that it takes to think that 200 years of activity could cause the planet to change that much.
Wolf wins every fight but the one where he dies, fangs locked around the throat of his opponent. 
Currently writing BROBd

Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#45
(02-22-2019, 06:17 AM)Rajvik Wrote: Forget the science for a minute

Really? Just ignore all the science, the evidence, the direct physical consequences we're facing right now, and go 'oh, it's arrogant to think mankind did this?'
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#46
Matrix, the science has been argued back and forth to no end and both sides of the argument are effectively sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "I'm not listening to you." That is why I say that. The direct physical consequences you mention all seem to be microcosms, local phenomena that are not the world as a whole. In short, people are making mountains out of mole hills because it is their local environment and their standard of living., they never seem to think about what the changes they are demanding are going to do to everyone else
Wolf wins every fight but the one where he dies, fangs locked around the throat of his opponent. 
Currently writing BROBd

Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#47
Rajvik, forget your sense of hubris for a moment and realize that humanity has been notably affecting the world for millenia. Everything we know about the functioning of the climate says that humanity is having a notable impact on it, even if it's not quite certain to what extent.

This is not controversial in science. 99% of the scientists who study the climate say this. In fact, the only question to them is how bad it is, and all data is pointing towards 'very bad to apocalyptic.' You are trying to make a mountain of a mole hill by saying that the minority of scientists who say otherwise have a strong argument for their position and thus are equal to the majority. They don't and they aren't.
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#48
(02-22-2019, 06:17 AM)Rajvik Wrote: And that right there is one of the best arguments I have ever heard to disprove the idea that global warming/climate change is man made. Forget the science for a minute and realize the arrogance that it takes to think that 200 years of activity could cause the planet to change that much.

How is it arrogance?  I don't understand this argument at all.  And if it is arrogant, how does that disprove any portion of any other argument?

I've seen it formulated as a religious argument, that God is in charge of the weather and the Sun.  But right there in Genesis 1 God gives us dominion over all the living creatures on Earth.  So I don't understand how we couldn't affect the thing we were specifically put in charge of, or how it would be arrogant to say that we exercised a power granted to us by God.

Quote:Matrix, the science has been argued back and forth to no end and both sides of the argument are effectively sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "I'm not listening to you." That is why I say that. The direct physical consequences you mention all seem to be microcosms, local phenomena that are not the world as a whole. In short, people are making mountains out of mole hills because it is their local environment and their standard of living., they never seem to think about what the changes they are demanding are going to do to everyone else
This is a consequence of the maxim "all politics is local", and not a description of the global Earth-atmosphere system.  Unfortunately most of us in the field have had bad experiences getting people to care about the global state, so we have to make it local enough for them to take action.  It takes a lot more effort to make a human care about the suffering of others.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#49
(02-22-2019, 07:54 AM)Rajvik Wrote: Matrix, the science has been argued back and forth to no end and both sides of the argument are effectively sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "I'm not listening to you."  

I mean, I appreciate you admitting straight up that you have no intention of engaging in good faith. It's certainly refreshing.
Reply
RE: Forests and carbon capture
#50
(02-22-2019, 04:25 PM)Epsilon Wrote:
(02-22-2019, 07:54 AM)Rajvik Wrote: Matrix, the science has been argued back and forth to no end and both sides of the argument are effectively sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "I'm not listening to you."  

I mean, I appreciate you admitting straight up that you have no intention of engaging in good faith. It's certainly refreshing.


Well met mister Kettle, my name is Pot.

Quote:source 
For starters, the warming rate is gradual and fairly constant, not rapid and accelerating, as it’s often claimed.

The U.N.-approved models used to project climate change impacts overshoot the observed warming by up to five times as much as has actually occurred in the tropical troposphere—a region where greenhouse theory expects the most rapid warming to occur.

As i said, the science is debatable and both sides have reached the points where they are doing this. I am willing to listen, however plain observation tells us that it is a steaming pile of horse dung. I remember some of the earlier "Global warming flood maps" that showed that by 2020 Florida would be under water. Now it's 2019 and i'm not dealing with the gulf washing at my front door so call me a bit skeptical of the whole global warming claim. Add to that, when all of a sudden we had that "freak" massive snow storm across the northern US and Canada, (you remember that Rob, wasn't it 2008 or there abouts) all of a sudden it went from being "Global Warming" to "Climate Change" because people could point to one of the coldest winters on record and say "Where's your Global warming now?"

Now, if you read further on my quoted source you'll find this little gem
Quote:Perils of Climate Policy 

Climate campaigners hype the risks of global warming and belittle, ignore, or deny the benefits of fossil fuels. Would their so-called climate solutions—carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, renewable energy quota, fracking bans—make us safer or the reverse?

Pick almost any climate policy on the books, and you will find an abysmal benefit-cost ratio. For example, the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan would avert less than two-hundredths of a degree Celsius of global warming by 2100. That’s according to the EPA’s climate simulator, a model aptly named MAGICC. Yet achieving that miniscule result would cost tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in compliance burdens and economic fallout.

The stock rejoinder is that if the whole world implements such policies, we can take big bites out of global warming. Perhaps, but then the problem is that any truly ambitious global program of fossil-fuel suppression is potentially a humanitarian disaster.

For example, according to the IPCC’s overheated climate models, the Paris Agreement’s central goal, which is to keep global warming below 2°C, will require reducing global carbon dioxide emissions 40-70 percent below 2010 levels by 2050. There is no known way to do that without compelling developing countries to make substantial reductions in their current consumption of fossil fuels.

in short Climate Change correction policies are an attempt at a back door to SOCIALISM, and that, like the Green New Deal is a big NO THANKS in my book.
Wolf wins every fight but the one where he dies, fangs locked around the throat of his opponent. 
Currently writing BROBd

Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 2 Guest(s)