[Off Topic] What else can we do?

[AudubonB]

This is Guac's thread - I was trying to limit my responses to carbon dioxide levels. But if he wants to foster here a discussion on human population (I think a separate thread would be preferable), that's his choice.

I don't think it's difficult - I think it is impossible - to reconcile phrases like

• Saghost's "...we aren't close to what the limit [of human population] that the planet can safely support...", or mspohr's "...the earth could easily support 10x current population..."

• with the right now collapse of the world's insect populations: What’s Causing the Sharp Decline in Insects, and Why It Matters
• or my own observations of a severe decline in not even a quarter-century of observations of effectively every species of migratory songbirds nesting in this stretch of tundra. It is not, I am convinced, a result of any ecological change here - it is because the massive disruption of their wintering grounds: monoculture ag-grounds displacing winter grasslands in NoAm, clear-cutting in Central and South America, and urban sprawl everywhere.
• Can humans survive without songbirds? Probably, although they likely are unplumbed marker species for ecologic doom. Can humans survive without insects and other invertebrates? With their unparalleled niche near the base of the base food chain, almost certainly not.

And now you know my opinion.

 

[AudubonB]

You tempt me to disagree. But I will just say you are acting like a jerk instead. Disagreement is healthy, threaten at your peril.

Thank you kindly.

See - that's just my forum point: you did disagree with me, BUT you expressed your reasons. THAT is what makes this a forum and not just some utterly useless and divisive [un]popularity poll.

The arguments I gave in my first post here were very precise ones: they focus on and only on changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide. To your points:

• "Sequestered carbon from trees"? No - from my big picture geologist's viewpoint, with the vastly-larger-than-human-scale time periods, if it's in a tree, it ain't sequestered. But - from a human perspective I do agree with you.
• "waste oil in a landfill"? There I was making an academic argument and it appears to me you took the idea literally rather than, again, from the geologic perspective. Perhaps I wan't clear enough.
• I absolutely, vehemently disagree with your proposition that composting sequesters carbon. That does not make me anti-compost - gracious, the single largest mass of "soil" in this rocky glacial morasse I call home are the dozens of cubic yards of black gold I painstaking have created over my decades of living here - all composted "waste".
• If we veer from looking just at CO2 and begin to examine other environmental concerns....well, you might want to read what I explored in my immediately prior post.

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

Make sure ALL lights are LED. They are much better even if you have CFL's.
Blanket around water heater.
Low flow shower heads
Check house for any air leaks and seal them up.

.. blanket around water heater .. see when I touch my water heater .. it doesn't feel warm. So I don't think it is leaking heat.
Low flow shower heads .. hmm .. worth considering, but then the shower takes 4x longer.
LEDs - already did that.
Air leaks - already did that.

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

This is Guac's thread - I was trying to limit my responses to carbon dioxide levels. But if he wants to foster here a discussion on human population (I think a separate thread would be preferable), that's his choice.
.

All discussion is good, as long as it contributes something positive and doesn't turn into a fight. I'm learning from all these comments. Thanks!

 

[AudubonB]

You're always welcome.

 

[Wshowell]

.. blanket around water heater .. see when I touch my water heater .. it doesn't feel warm. So I don't think it is leaking heat.
Low flow shower heads .. hmm .. worth considering, but then the shower takes 4x longer.
LEDs - already did that.
Air leaks - already did that.

Consider doing the same for someone else like a family member, neighbor, friend etc and double the benefits.

 

[Takumi]

.. blanket around water heater .. see when I touch my water heater .. it doesn't feel warm. So I don't think it is leaking heat.
Low flow shower heads .. hmm .. worth considering, but then the shower takes 4x longer.
LEDs - already did that.
Air leaks - already did that.

Nebia Shower | The Premium Sustainable Shower

I do not have any personal experience with this product.

 

[ohmman]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is wasted food. It bothers me nearly as much as ornamental fossil fuel fires or purposelessly idling vehicles, but certainly has more incorporated carbon impact than either. Shop with purpose and a plan. Waste as little as possible, and consider every time you throw something away to be a failure. I am shocked on a regular basis to see how much food people throw away. The FAO estimated that in 2007, wasted food accounted for 7% of global CO2 emissions.

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

@Takumi - $499 for a shower head? Do you think I sell iPhones for a living?

@ohmman - I agree. I get the organic cage free type eggs where the chickens had a good life, but damn I make sure I don't waste them!

 

[gavine]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is wasted food. It bothers me nearly as much as ornamental fossil fuel fires or purposelessly idling vehicles, but certainly has more incorporated carbon impact than either. Shop with purpose and a plan. Waste as little as possible, and consider every time you throw something away to be a failure. I am shocked on a regular basis to see how much food people throw away. The FAO estimated that in 2007, wasted food accounted for 7% of global CO2 emissions.

Ever since I learned of this a year ago (never thought about it before that), I have gained a few pounds because I try not to waste food for that very reason. So the carbon in that food that would have otherwise been metabolized by micro organisms is, instead, sequestered around my gut . It'll be there until I either exercise it off, or get cremated.

 

[ohmman]

Ever since I learned of this a year ago (never thought about it before that), I have gained a few pounds because I try not to waste food for that very reason. So the carbon in that food that would have otherwise been metabolized by micro organisms is, instead, sequestered around my gut . It'll be there until I either exercise it off, or get cremated.

Buy less!

 

[gavine]

Buy less!

It's usually at restaurants. I end-up eating my kid's leftovers....usually the items that are not good to take home re-heat (french fries). On the bright side of that, I'm so full that I tend to eat less later so still avoids waste.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

The wonderful thing about it being 2017 and not 1997 is that your actions can now have a more tangible effect on the whole of society. I primarily advocate for consumer-owned solar not because it's carbon-friendly, but because it breaks the insane incentive cycle that brings us things like ubiquitous bottled water when there used to be a clean tap everywhere. All budgetary priorities within the state of Pennsylvania revolve entirely around the ability to extract and export methane as a byproduct of oil exploration.

I'm a selfish sustainability nut. Recycling in your own world simply because it's the right thing to do is noble, but I prefer to weaponize my initiatives against something that annoys me. 90% of our current maladies are rooted in the economics of oil. We now have a clear as day avenue to ending oil, all we need to do is put solar on our roofs and get paid thousands of dollars in savings to do it.

This should be our #1 priority since it makes everything else much easier once the oil titans aren't running the entire show. So.........you should organize a community solar project in your neighborhood, source battery backup for each home(through Tesla!), and zero out everyone's net annual electricity demand.

And try to eat far less red meat, you'll enjoy it more as a treat anyway.

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

It'll be there until I either exercise it off, or get cremated.

Oh yes another thing. Getting cremated is not eco friendly. Burying is much more green. I know there is that whole religion issue though.

 

[Takumi]

@Takumi - $499 for a shower head? Do you think I sell iPhones for a living?

@ohmman - I agree. I get the organic cage free type eggs where the chickens had a good life, but damn I make sure I don't waste them!

But you own a Tesla!

- Mist makes the whole bathroom wet (and susceptible to mold) unless it is a fully enclosed shower.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Oh yes another thing. Getting cremated is not eco friendly. Burying is much more green. I know there is that whole religion issue though.

Well, there is the maintenance of the burial plot. What we really need is a bare-(soon-to-be-)bones service where they take your body, harvest any useful organs and then the remainder of your corpse is added to a system optimized for rapid decompostion.

You can sign up to donate your body for medical research/training, but they don't guarantee they'll take it.

 

[ohmman]

Speaking of rapid decomposition, composting is definitely something on the list of things people should do.

Not necessarily with your own dead body.

 

[SD Diver]

.. blanket around water heater .. see when I touch my water heater .. it doesn't feel warm. So I don't think it is leaking heat.
Low flow shower heads .. hmm .. worth considering, but then the shower takes 4x longer.
LEDs - already did that.
Air leaks - already did that.

Mainly LED. Solar being installed. 2 CPO 2013 Teslas Been gasoline-free for over a year. Tankless water heater should take care of the blanket issue. Natural gas for heating but in coastal SoCal hardly turn on the heater. Got rid of my lawns. Have a variable-speed pool pump that only goes off after midnight. Cut out most dairy in favor of cashew/almond milk (don't almonds take a heck of a lot of water?). Can't give up my Sunday ritual of a 2" Sous vide NY strip steak cooked to 135F for 2.5 hours. OK - so I can commit to 3 meatless days per week. Hey - my daughter went vegan - do I get points?

I still need to cut out plastic bottles (I'm looking at you diet coke share with Ariel bottle sitting to my left). Oh - and a 960 watt total chandelier that isn't LED (crystal and LED candelabra bulbs don't mix - but hey my solar and power wall 2 should make up for it). 2 kids - so according to an above post I'm borderline acceptable there...

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

Well, there is the maintenance of the burial plot. What we really need is a bare-(soon-to-be-)bones service where they take your body, harvest any useful organs and then the remainder of your corpse is added to a system optimized for rapid decompostion.

You can sign up to donate your body for medical research/training, but they don't guarantee they'll take it.

Not to get political or degenerate this thread etc. (and I'm an atheist/spiritual), but a lot of people hate islam for some very good reasons.
Unfortunately there is a lot of good in that religion that people overlook.

One of them is, people are buried in an unmarked grave. The original intent was to not even have graveyards. Just bury and forget and move on. How eco-friendly is that.

 

[Skotty]

As I see it,

SEQUESTERED CARBON = BAD
"CARBON CYCLE" CARBON = BENIGN

That is, if you envision making use of fossil fuels as the opening of a Pandora's Box, then anything you can do to keep that lid down is to the benefit of the planet. Certainly, different energy sources differ in their release of CO2 per unit energy, but in truth it's not just coal, not just crude oil, fracked oil, shale oil - but so-called "clean burning" natural gas also derives from carbon that's been out of the carbon loop for, mostly, 300 million years. The earth is a very different place from that era.

"Carbon-cycle" carbon includes effectively anything of current derivation. Firewood is the most obvious example, but any vegetal matter - grasses, foodstuffs, even peat - I consider harmless and the reason is that in instantaneous geologic time - that is, within a few thousand years and usually far less - those compounds will be releasing their constituent carbon, usually through the effects of ground- or termite-hosted bacteria but direct oxidation, aka burning, works as well - back into the atmosphere.

That being the case, the seemingly counter-intuitive action of warming your house through a relatively dirty woodfire rather than through the clean flame of natural gas is, in fact, less of a burden on our environment. It's simplistic but usefully truthful to realize that log will out in nature rot and decay and its carbon will become atmospheric CO2, and so the fact that it's occurring now rather than in 20 years is meaningless But the natgas? Keep it back in the Carboniferous-era stratum where it's been sequestered for close to half an aeon.

The more draconian, unpopular...a certain person joined to it the word "inconvenient"....truth is that the most powerful way to lessen our footprint is by limiting - severely - our offspring. 0 is best; 1 is good; 2 is borderline satisfactory....and every number beyond that is unjustifiable by any calculus.

This is something I would like to see more "science" on. It's the reason I don't immediately consider ambiguous things like livestock to be as an immediate concern as the burning of fossil fuels, which is far more obvious. How much of the cow burps and farts are just carbon cycle, and how much is release of sequestered carbon or perhaps the recombining of molecules into more harmful combinations. I don't really know the answer to that, and I feel as though there has been insufficient research on it.

I don't know that I would say carbon cycle carbon changes are harmless, but I am fairly certain that release of sequestered carbon is generally worse.

I am a bit of a skeptic at heart. I don't doubt climate change. I think the evidence for that is more or less indisputable. But things like plastic bag use I have more reserved judgement on. Canvas bags are awesome, I highly recommend them. But if we were to recycle all of our plastic bags, would plastic bag use still be a bad thing? I'm not so sure. Probably still not as good as a reusable bag, but much of the harm could potentially be mitigated sufficiently. Some of the farming issues I think fall into this same reserved judgement category -- more research needed. Maybe we do need to reduce our meat consumption, but with proper farming care, I think meat can probably still be a part of our diet.

As for population, I think 2 kids is just fine. That's just basic population replacement. Takes 2 to make 2.