If enough people understood exactly just how much goes into getting the materials that we use for various things, the whole concept of "consuming to save the planet" would be laid bare for the farce it is. "Reduce" is the first one on the list for a reason.
I live in an area where you can drive for an entire day and it's nothing but trees. I totally agree with you that we need to fight to keep the earth green.
I think there's something we need to be careful of though, a friend of mine pointed it out: If we just min/max "more trees", then you end up engaging in certain practices where pack a bunch of the same trees in really tight in ways they wouldn't grow in nature because you can say you got more trees that way, but growing that way has negative consequences for the environment as well.
Monoculture, planting a bunch of one type of tree, for example, results in one bad disease for one species being able to wipe your entire forest. Canada's facing this in a lot of places right now, for example with the pine beetle outbreak harming British Columbia forests.
There's also practices like planting lots of trees really close together. In nature that's not how they grow, but it lets you say "Look at all the trees we planted!" but in the long term that's not a healthy forest and it's prone to things like fires as well.
I think there's something we need to be careful of though, a friend of mine pointed it out: If we just min/max "more trees", then you end up engaging in certain practices where pack a bunch of the same trees in really tight in ways they wouldn't grow in nature because you can say you got more trees that way, but growing that way has negative consequences for the environment as well.
Monoculture, planting a bunch of one type of tree, for example, results in one bad disease for one species being able to wipe your entire forest. Canada's facing this in a lot of places right now, for example with the pine beetle outbreak harming British Columbia forests.
There's also practices like planting lots of trees really close together. In nature that's not how they grow, but it lets you say "Look at all the trees we planted!" but in the long term that's not a healthy forest and it's prone to things like fires as well.
The rock is produced by living things. Something creates some energy through photosynthesis, and either it creates a carbonate shell like coccolithophores or Coralline algaes, or ends up getting eaten by something else that goes up the food chain to feed something like a clam or a snail. What happens is those creatures live, grow, then die, and when they die their shells fall to the bottom of the sea and compact together, and these tiny creatures dying adds up over geological timeframes.
I ended up on a geological history of earth kick a few years ago, and stuff like this ended up being incredibly interesting because some really big things end up almost irrelevant to the geological record, but some really small things like microorganisms end up being immensely important.
I ended up on a geological history of earth kick a few years ago, and stuff like this ended up being incredibly interesting because some really big things end up almost irrelevant to the geological record, but some really small things like microorganisms end up being immensely important.
The fact that the earth once had 22 atmospheres of CO2 and that's where life evolved, and all fossil fuels on earth were produced while life existed on the planet suggests that the calls for apocalypse might be greatly exaggerated. Burn every fossil fuel on earth and there's still mountains of carbonates that aren't going anywhere.
The carbonate is created when life takes the carbon out of the air somehow (it comes out using photosynthesis, but whether the life that did it or something that eats that primary consumer depends on which life it is) and then forms a hard shell. The hard shell is made out of carbonate, which when the creature dies falls to the bottom of the lake or ocean, creating the sedimentary layers of rock made out of carbonates.
It's important that we get the second step, because if you just pull carbon out of the air and use it or decompose it, then you're just taking it out and putting it back on non-geological timeframes. Cellulose was good because it didn't decompose for an era, but that era is long gone.
It's important that we get the second step, because if you just pull carbon out of the air and use it or decompose it, then you're just taking it out and putting it back on non-geological timeframes. Cellulose was good because it didn't decompose for an era, but that era is long gone.
The last time trees did a great job of capturing carbon on geological timescales was an era called the carboniferous period. This was after trees evolved but before anything evolved that could decompose wood. That's where virtually all our coal deposits come from. After this period, wood decomposes back into CO2 thanks to fungus, so it doesn't do a great job of capturing carbon on long timescales. Instead it's more like the trees are just borrowing the carbon briefly.
On geological timeframes, the problem with most things like trees or fungi is that they die and decompose and release the carbon they had, whereas sedimentary rock just keeps on building up millennium after millennium. We haven't had trees store carbon on geological timeframes since the carboniferous period, the geological period after the evolution of cellulose but before the evolution of cellulose eating fungi when the world was covered in massive forests that just kept on growing and falling over and getting covered up and sent underground.
Some people think that carbon capture systems are the way to solve climate change (and yes, I recognise that not everyone thinks that carbon is even a problem to be solved)
Historically speaking, the most effective carbon capture in nature seems to me to have been sedimentary rock in the form of carbonates. At one point in the Archaean period, the earth was apparently at like 22 bar of CO2, and the period right before the oxygen catastrophe would have had much of that carbon being locked up in rock, and much of the oxygen getting sucked up by sinks like the plains of iron that were suddenly rusting.
Honestly, the oxygen catastrophe should be on of the most important geological events in human history, and something we should teach to every schoolchild. Besides changing the atmosphere into something made up of mostly oxygen, the oxygen catastrophe also caused a global ice age. Between the two, the earth saw over 90% of its life die out.
Sort of a warning in that, I think -- if we're not careful playing God we could wipe out most life on Earth...
Historically speaking, the most effective carbon capture in nature seems to me to have been sedimentary rock in the form of carbonates. At one point in the Archaean period, the earth was apparently at like 22 bar of CO2, and the period right before the oxygen catastrophe would have had much of that carbon being locked up in rock, and much of the oxygen getting sucked up by sinks like the plains of iron that were suddenly rusting.
Honestly, the oxygen catastrophe should be on of the most important geological events in human history, and something we should teach to every schoolchild. Besides changing the atmosphere into something made up of mostly oxygen, the oxygen catastrophe also caused a global ice age. Between the two, the earth saw over 90% of its life die out.
Sort of a warning in that, I think -- if we're not careful playing God we could wipe out most life on Earth...
With something like the posted picture, the thing I can't help but think is "but what about the guys who achieve everything they want?"
There's normal guys with normal wives who have normal families out there. People with one income and a house and a car. It's rarer than it used to be, but the honorary boomer does exist.
There's normal guys with normal wives who have normal families out there. People with one income and a house and a car. It's rarer than it used to be, but the honorary boomer does exist.
Problem is that we live in reality, and have to solve problems in reality. If you need to spend a bunch of money to actually solve the problem then that's the actual cost.
Nuclear is really inexpensive except you need to deal with materials that can be turned into weapons of mass destruction and there's a risk of big disasters that can permanently make a chunk of a country uninhabitable and can hurt people in a massive region so there's a massive regulatory burden. So it's not really inexpensive.
Coal is really inexpensive except you need to deal with getting ahold of industrial scale coal to burn and they're massively polluting in both local and global ways so there's a massive regulatory burden and the regulation doesn't even cover those externalities. So it's not really inexpensive.
Solar is at its cheapest for one hour a day about 1/3 of the year, and people need power all through the day and night and all through the year, and you need to both massively overbuild your plants to meet electrical needs in the limited time you're generating each day and you need massive energy storage to deal with the majority of the time that you're not getting the energy. So it's not really inexpensive (might be useful for some applications, however! Some places really need an energy boost when it's brightest and hottest).
You used the word "Convenience" which implies that it's optional, the word convenience often is implied to be optional, but sometimes convenience is mandatory and life or death. Like a hospital is ideal if you get hurt, but if you're in the woods far from civilization and get hurt, a first aid kit is convenient and if you don't have something convenient you might die because you're in the woods -- you can't carry a hospital with you! In the same way, if we want to stop most emissions we'll need to deal with home heating. Home heating is mandatory. If you can't heat your home in winter in many places then everyone dies, and that isn't hyperbole. If people can't heat their homes with electric, then they're likely to use fossil fuels such as natural gas or fuel oil. Therefore, if we care about carbon emissions, we should care about actually inexpensive electricity.
All this is borne out by the data that around the world, on virtually every continent, in many different countries, hydroelectric electricity leads to some of the lowest electricity rates for individuals. That's backed up by the data showing some of the lowest electricity costs on earth are the highest hydroelectric usage. Even within the same country, proportion of hydroelectric power is directly predictive of the electricity costs for consumers. In Canada, the price of electricity is directly inversely correlated with the amount of hydroelectric generation in use, with British Columbia, Quebec and Manitoba having the lowest rates in the country and using all renewables driven primarily by hydroelectric, followed by provinces like Ontario that use some hydroelectric, trailed by provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan that rely mostly on fossil fuels. Norway had a period where electricity prices for consumers were below zero for an hour recently and has the lowest electricity prices on earth compared to incomes. Continuing on with reality here, 73% of Norway's homes are heated with electricity according to statistics Norway from 2014 (Proving my previous thesis once again that inexpensive carbon-neutral electricity helps eliminate fossil fuels used for home heating) There's also regions in China and south America with high levels of hydroelectric production.
Of course you do have to be careful with hydroelectric, it isn't the best bet everywhere. To give a great example, Ethiopia is building a massive dam, and it's likely to cause a war because it will reduce the water flow through the Nile river having large effects on Egypt. Therefore you need to make sure if you're using hydroelectric you balance the environmental, social, and geopolitical consequences of building hydroelectric facilities. In places where it's practical and reasonably low impact, however, it's the top choice where you can do it because unlike most alternatives, it has a century-long track record of success.
tl;dr: Jeff has one line denials and unsubstantiated excuses. I've got a globe and a century of data. And a wall of text.
Nuclear is really inexpensive except you need to deal with materials that can be turned into weapons of mass destruction and there's a risk of big disasters that can permanently make a chunk of a country uninhabitable and can hurt people in a massive region so there's a massive regulatory burden. So it's not really inexpensive.
Coal is really inexpensive except you need to deal with getting ahold of industrial scale coal to burn and they're massively polluting in both local and global ways so there's a massive regulatory burden and the regulation doesn't even cover those externalities. So it's not really inexpensive.
Solar is at its cheapest for one hour a day about 1/3 of the year, and people need power all through the day and night and all through the year, and you need to both massively overbuild your plants to meet electrical needs in the limited time you're generating each day and you need massive energy storage to deal with the majority of the time that you're not getting the energy. So it's not really inexpensive (might be useful for some applications, however! Some places really need an energy boost when it's brightest and hottest).
You used the word "Convenience" which implies that it's optional, the word convenience often is implied to be optional, but sometimes convenience is mandatory and life or death. Like a hospital is ideal if you get hurt, but if you're in the woods far from civilization and get hurt, a first aid kit is convenient and if you don't have something convenient you might die because you're in the woods -- you can't carry a hospital with you! In the same way, if we want to stop most emissions we'll need to deal with home heating. Home heating is mandatory. If you can't heat your home in winter in many places then everyone dies, and that isn't hyperbole. If people can't heat their homes with electric, then they're likely to use fossil fuels such as natural gas or fuel oil. Therefore, if we care about carbon emissions, we should care about actually inexpensive electricity.
All this is borne out by the data that around the world, on virtually every continent, in many different countries, hydroelectric electricity leads to some of the lowest electricity rates for individuals. That's backed up by the data showing some of the lowest electricity costs on earth are the highest hydroelectric usage. Even within the same country, proportion of hydroelectric power is directly predictive of the electricity costs for consumers. In Canada, the price of electricity is directly inversely correlated with the amount of hydroelectric generation in use, with British Columbia, Quebec and Manitoba having the lowest rates in the country and using all renewables driven primarily by hydroelectric, followed by provinces like Ontario that use some hydroelectric, trailed by provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan that rely mostly on fossil fuels. Norway had a period where electricity prices for consumers were below zero for an hour recently and has the lowest electricity prices on earth compared to incomes. Continuing on with reality here, 73% of Norway's homes are heated with electricity according to statistics Norway from 2014 (Proving my previous thesis once again that inexpensive carbon-neutral electricity helps eliminate fossil fuels used for home heating) There's also regions in China and south America with high levels of hydroelectric production.
Of course you do have to be careful with hydroelectric, it isn't the best bet everywhere. To give a great example, Ethiopia is building a massive dam, and it's likely to cause a war because it will reduce the water flow through the Nile river having large effects on Egypt. Therefore you need to make sure if you're using hydroelectric you balance the environmental, social, and geopolitical consequences of building hydroelectric facilities. In places where it's practical and reasonably low impact, however, it's the top choice where you can do it because unlike most alternatives, it has a century-long track record of success.
tl;dr: Jeff has one line denials and unsubstantiated excuses. I've got a globe and a century of data. And a wall of text.
"Solar is the cheapest source of electricity"
that's false. It's fake. It's a lie. It's a non-truth.
If it was true, then the places with solar would have the cheapest electricity on earth, and that's not true at all. The places with the cheapest electricity on earth are all hydroelectric.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-e46xdcUo
that's false. It's fake. It's a lie. It's a non-truth.
If it was true, then the places with solar would have the cheapest electricity on earth, and that's not true at all. The places with the cheapest electricity on earth are all hydroelectric.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-e46xdcUo