The Cycle of Global Warming 42

[Ashereng]

How many respondents to this thread:
- drive hydrocarbon powered vehicles?
- heat their homes?
- cool their homes?
- utilize electricity from coal fired generating stations?

So, what are you personally willing to sacrifice for global warming?

Until you are willing to contribute personally, chances are, society (which you belong in) won't either.

 

[jmw]

What would I give up for the environment?

Street lights.

This doesn't require a belief in global warming or even in environmental friendliness, just a natural dislike of waste and excessive local government taxation.

Options:
[ul][li] take out unnecessary lights[/li]
[li]turn off the lights in the dead hours of the night... are they really necessary all night long?[/li]
[li] substitute smart light management e.g. motion sensors... I'm sure governments would love everyone to be bugged so their computers can track us all the time... and they could then only switch on lights that are needed... but I'd rather a more anonymous means of active lighting control.[/li]
[li]big plus: in theory, a chance to reduce my local government taxes; reality? they'll probably dump the money saved into government workers final salary pension schemes. But what the heck, at least we'll save firvolous energy usage.[/li][/ul]

By the way, anyone got any data on municipal power use on lighting?

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Ashereng]

jmw,

Good answer. I liked that.

 

[BillPSU]

davefitz
If such a tax would be placed on from the producers of electricity to the consumer of electricity. I can guarantee the tax would be passed on to the consumer and not come out of the utilities pocket. The cigarette tax is not paid by the manufacturer its paid by the smoker with higher prices.

Corporation do not build plants because they decide its not the time to invest or the economic conditions are not correct(too much unused capacity, too much risk, not profitable). Look at the oil industry there has not been a new refinery built for years. Reason there is enough capacity and when there is a glitch in the system (Katrina) prices naturally go up and they make more profit.

 

[LCruiser]

BillPSU -

Actually, new power production is all natural gas. Coal would be much cheaper, but the potential for future restrictions makes building coal plants risky.

Because of that, my natural gas bill is about $500 higher this year than last.

 

[z633]

I somehow was on a barstool in st. louis mo. and met a retired power engineer from the local electrical utility. He stated that con-ed, or something-ed there used 100 box-load cars a day of coal. Rather staggering i pondered, as i staggered out. One comment in all the above got me thinking, is there somewhere, baby coal fields or baby oil fields out there maturating in puberty, adolescence or infantile states that will reap a harvest someday in the future? or we just clear cutting all of these carbon compounds forever lost? the american landfills come to mind, but what a toxic mess, (or treasure) that would be to harvest 150,000 years from now.

 

[davefitz]

z633:

Staggering may be the correct word. A new 1000 MWe coal fired plant ,operating at 75% capacity factor with a 37% net station cycle efficiency, will burn about 3.03E6 Ton coal/yr, which works out to about 8.88E6 T/yr CO2 if the coal is 80% carbon by weight.In the worst case, with a $20/Ton CO2 tax, that is an annual tax bill of $177.7 E6/yr. Excluding inflation etc, that would be $5.33 billion USD over a 30 yr life of the plant.

Some other less known facts:

According to the DOE, the 250 yr reserves of US coal actually works out to about 45 yrs if one factors into the equation normal increase in coal usage plus coal gasififcation plus coal-to-liquids re[placement for oil.

Also, latest reports are that 10-35% of all atmospheric methane is actually a natural product of plant activity while they are growing , which shoots to he!! the concept of plating trees to offset CO2 emmissios.

 

[jmw]

Interesting:
apparently mitochondrial DNA studies suggest that 60-70,000 years ago the human race was virtually wiped out and down to literally no more than a few thousand people.

That seems a remarkably recent event.

Co-incidentally right in the middle of this time frame Tora errupted leaving a 100km caldera lake.

Estimates of the sulphur released and the resultant cooling suggest the average global temperature dropped by 5degC or as much as 15degC in the northern zones.

The big caldera type volcanic event on the horizon to worry everyone is when Yellowstone park goes up.
This would be an extinction level event.

The problem is that with no observational data on this type of volcanic erruption know one has any idea what the warning signs will be.

I would guess we can adapt to temperature changes of 1 deg over a 100year period (is this what is meant by "Sudden Climate Change"?) but 5 degrees overnight is a bit of a problem.

ELE's and sub-ELEs are great for Hollywood (2 x Meterorites in one year, earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes in downtown LA) but perhaps they have pursuaded people that all such events, because they have been portrayed by Hollywood, are fanatsies and thus it is a bit difficult to get worked up about global warming, especially without a box-office star name in the title role.



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[PSE]

LCruiser,

In my view, CO2 being harmful to the environment does not have to be established as fact. Oftimes engineers need to contend with "this could happen scenarios" not that they necessarily will.

What will happen if we irreversibly change the gas mixture of our atmosphere? Truth is, I don't know. Empirically I do not think anything good will come of it. Most organisms die when their environment is sufficiently disrupted.

What is the probability that the gas mixture of our atmosphere is irreversibly changing? Again, I don't know as it is a tremendously complex system that science is still learning about.

What containment or preventative actions can be taken to prevent this (presumably undesirable) effect from happening? This I can at least try to do something about. In the way I live my life, and the way I help my company produce its products.

Regards,

 

[epoisses]

PSE,

I'd be glad to take any preventive action to prevent any potential undesirable even in case that action is free, like putting on my seatbelt.

But are you prepared to never switch on your AC anymore (if you need one where you live) because of a scenario of which we don't know whether it is happening and of which we don't know what would be the results?

I think the relationship between fresh fruit and cancer has been established much better than "human" CO2 and climate change (whatever it may result in). So do you eat 3 oranges a day to prevent a horrible scenario? If not, if that is already too much, how would you reduce your energy consumption sufficiently?

There are so many other things mankind can do to prevent so much more realistic doom scenarios much more efficiently (famine, AIDS, you name it) that I wonder why we spend so much money and effort on CO2.

 

[epoisses]

evenT (sorry)

 

[LCruiser]

The problem with lowering CO2 as a "preventative" is that increased CO2 increases plant (aka food) growth. With the burgeoning population of the world today, you're not talking about a potential detraction vs. no change (besides which climate is always changing anyway), you'r talking about potential detraction vs. potential enhancement, and we don't know enough yet to understand the relative magnitude of effects:

http://www.co2science.org

 

[CajunCenturion]

I believe that photosynthesis is the largest oxygen producing process, not to mention sugar, on the earth, and is vital to almost every form of life on the planet. Photosynthesis requires plants and CO₂.

6CO₂ + 12H₂O + Sunlight ? C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ + 6H₂O

If photosynthesis doesn't take place, humans die. If we reduce the atmosphereic levels of CO₂ too much, or too quickly, we can starve the very plants that produce the oxygen we breath.

It's a very complex system, and there are huge gaps in our knowledge about its inner workings. How we proceed could, and probably will, have drastic effects on humanity. Doing nothing could, and also too probably would, have equally drastic effects as well. We can quite easily make a bad situation worse if we do the wrong thing.

There are no easy answers, but one thing you can be sure of, there are those who simply are in it for the money, living well on fear mongering, and by exploiting "the sky is falling" mentality.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[epoisses]

Cajun, don't worry, global warming will either go out of fashion again or some day turn into a real, visible and workable problem.

 

[ivymike]

If you're worried about your own well-being, and that of your offspring, does it make more sense to try to prevent global warming, or to try to position yourself and your offspring to be amongst the group that survives it, no matter how bad it gets? My own feeling is that being amongst the few survivors might be better than trying to stop a disaster. The question then becomes "how do I position myself to give my offspring a fighting chance of being in that group?"

Possible answers:
- Having lots of offspring
- Accumulating lots of wealth (may be at odds with the first, and you have to store it appropriately!)
- Training your children to survive "off the land"
- Living in a moderately populated region of the world (not low enough pop. that you can't get support, but not dense enough that you starve)

Just think of the benefits you might reap as a member of "the few survivors!"

 

[Ashereng]

Hmmm. King of a wasteland.

 

[ivymike]

Wasteland? That's a matter of opinion. How long would it take to "clean up?" Probably only a generation or two...

 

[GregLocock]

Mad Max IV - revenge of the engineers



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[2dye4]

is it possible that by the time we people of the earth
can reach a concensus on this issue that it will be too late?

I think that is what worries some people about climate change.

If it takes a really undeniable,significant event to convince the vast majority that we have created a problem could it be that it is much harder to solve at that time.

I think Ivymike has the answear to this issue.
Maybe many of us look foreward to the challenge as a way
to give our offspring a repreductive advantage.

Darwin will reward us because we are smart.

 

[PSE]

For those who consider "excess" CO2 as good for plant growth and photosynthesis, please remember that plants also go through the respiration cycle and produce CO2 during the nightime hours.

Epoisses, I simply do the best I can with minimizing my personal impact on the environment. I grew up with farming and have maintained a sensitivity and affinity for nature. I had AC installed in my home after my son was diagnosed with asthma. (a condition that "seems" on the rise these days perhaps due to the air we breathe?)

Admittedly, I am not without certain "guilty pleasures" that are environmentally harmful as I enjoyed racing for a number of years. Overall, I try to do more good than harm. I do think that regardless of legislation to any affect, consideration of environmental impact should be a routine part of best engineering practice.

Regards,