Re: Re: global warming-- consensus?

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 10/23/03 3:59:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

heidis@... writes:

> Which is decidedly silly.

It may well be. I read it and didn't think it through.

But I have the choice to buy an SUV or a station wagon, and still do, and so

do all

> my friends.

My understanding is that station wagons were made considerably more costly

due to the above reasons, but that may be incorrect.

Most people choose vans or SUVs -- because they are higher. A lot of it has

to do

> with child seats. Buckling in kids is a PAIN, esp. in a small car. Also the

> SUVs had 4wd earlier, and in the country, a high bed is nice. But most

> people I've talked to didn't shop on price or milage, just convenience.

They've

> never heard of CAFE standards.

Oh, I didn't mean people choose based on CAFE standards, for sure, I was

thinking of the cost issue. I think you're right though. But the point that

remains, whether I was right or wrong about the effect on station wagons, is

that

it is rather silly to oppose the classification of SUVs under trucks.

> However, I have a Honda Civic that gets 50 MPG, and it isn't a lightweight

> car, really. It has a special engine. If they took THAT kind of engine and

> put it in an SUV or taller station wagon, you could have a high milage bigger

> vehicle, which makes a lot of sense to me.

>

Sounds like a good idea. I had a Hyundai Accent that got about 45 mpg.

Somehow, the way it was built, allowed it to have *lots* of power even though it

was a 4-cylynder. It was a four-door too.

> I'll have to test that. It doesn't TASTE acidic.

I don't usually drink rain water, but I've never drank anything we made in

chem lab either. Distilled water gets down to pH 5 or 6 if it's left in open

air. Things that taste really acidic like vinegar are usually down around 2,

aren't they? That's about 1000 times as acidic as something with a pH of 5.

> >Because it's acidic or because it's loaded with SO2? What's the pH of the

> rain >water, and does rain water mixed with CO2 to the same pH do the same

> thing? >HCl?

>

> Good question.

>

Yep. lol.

>

> >This is in part, anyway, because it is much less costly to make a van or

> SUV that fulfills CAFE standards for trucks than it is to make a station wagon

> that fulfills CAFE standards for cars.

>

> I'm not sure that cost is the real issue. It's easier on the manufacturer,

> sure, but my little Civic was cheap. Now, I know you are going to say, " but

> it's a LITTLE car " -- but the same model came out in a low-milage version,

> different engine. So one got 25 mph, an identical one got 50. However, no one

was

> buying the 50 mph ones, and the salesperson didn't even show it to me until

> I asked. It drives great, my DH says it thinks it is a sportscar. But no one

> believes it. Same as buying this house -- it has no furnace, so people were

> turned off.

hunh. That does say something about who's in the drivers' seat though... the

producers are filling a demand from the consumers in this scenario. Not sure

why people wouldn't want good gas mileage though. I hate the fact that I

only get 30 mpg now, and miss my old car.

> There is a certain consumer acceptance and advertising issue with a lot of

> these things. I expect people LIKE gas guzzling SUVs -- even BECAUSE they

> guzzle gas. It's a way of saying " I can AFFORD this!!!! " or even " Take that,

> liberal tree huggers! " (I heard that attitude from a new Hummer owner).

That's... unfortunate.

>

> But those people can work somewhere else where they can get to, or can move

> somewhere where there are jobs closer to where they live. Lots of people

> make the deliberate choice to have a long work commute because it allows them

to

> make city salaries with non-city living costs and living environments that

> maximizes their effective disposable income and gives them living conditions

> more suitable to their tastes.

>

> --> That may be true in the East, but in LA and Seattle it is very difficult

> to find work you can walk or take a bus to. I did without a car for 7 years,

> and it was HARD. And I moved often, which makes it hard to buy a house,

> which is most folk's main equity.

I dunno. I live out here :-)

> But if it is human caused, where are the limits? Do we just keep on causing

> more and more disruption?

Again, it's not really " disruption " per se because there's no " natural "

global temperature.

> Esp. if we don't know the consequences?

Well, I was referring to a hypothetical wherein we know it's human-caused and

we know, or have a good idea, of what kind of change will take place. I was

saying that if the change does not exceed what causes a major threat to us,

then, as a value judgment, there's no justification for saying it's wrong to

modify the climate.

But that's a hypothetical. Right now we don't really know what's going on. I

agree we should be researching and developing better fuels that pollute less,

but I think that's true regardless of global warming. If for nothing else,

because it's ethical and prudent to be efficient.

It isn't a value judgement -- if a volcano

> causes a few years of cooling and chaos, that isn't good at all, it's just

> that there isn't much to do about it. If a factory near me spouts pollutants

> and kills my trees (they aren't, no one would allow that around here now)

> then of course I'll complain and try to do something about it. If a drought

> kills my trees (which it did this year) then I'll try to do something if I

think

> it is man-made.

True, good points.

> It would depend where you live, probably. There have been a lot of

> disruptions lately, and they are expecting more and more rain (which we are

used to,

> but will cause lots of flooding). In the Northwest, they are expecting a lot

> of the native species to die back. Sure, that happens naturally, but it's not

> desirable in my book at all, esp. not if it happens quickly.

Sigh. Well, we'll see.

Chris

[Guest guest]

wheres " here " ...

make a coop out of it with down town businesses. Cost per mile is much less than

heavy rail or even highway when you figure in everyone needs to have a

multi-thousand dollar car to participate with fuel, insurance, maintenance

costs.

:-)

Re: Re: global warming-- consensus?

>Dya want a bigger car or one that will get you there quicker and safer? By

switching over to personal mono-rail'ish vehicles, (lightweight 4pax max ) and

having them public rather than private (eliminate parking hassels) you may be

surprised at the bennie's.

Oh, it would be great. Except that we can't even get one lousy 2mile monorail

built. BIG political issue here!

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

so far I havent seen any of the preassure/temp AIO process designed in small

scale for small towns, or even any real quotes as to cost of system set-up. Do

you have info on this? Are there any others persuing this kind of tech other

than the turkey waste promotion folks?

Re: Re: global warming-- consensus?

>Doesn't the anything-into-oil technology produce lower-grade oil?

No, it produces high-grade oil, without impurities. It is the SAME process

that produced the oil in the ground, but faster.

> Would

>cars be drivable (and efficient) without some kind of re-engineering, or at

>least retuning?

The oil it produces needs to be made more lightweight (as does oil from the

ground). But the end product is plain old gasoline. And whatever other things

you can make from oil, like plastics.

> Also, hydrogen is only cheaply producible at this point

>from fossil fuels, and since the existence of agricultural waste in current

>quantities depends on sufficient (incredibly high) fossil fuel inputs, I

>don't think anything-into-oil is going to be anything like the whole

>solution.

Some buildings are making it with solar cells on the roof of the building.

Obviously

making hydrogen from gas is silly.

As far as AIO efficiency, it has to do with conservation of matter. Take our

little town, of, say, 20,000 people. It imports gas, food, plastic. It exports

tons of trash. If all the organics and plastics in the trash were turned back

into oil, that would get rid of our sewage and landfill problem (the AIO can

even take smashed refrigerators and recycle them) and produce a LOT of oil, even

without agricultural byproducts. Of course there is loss, but there is also the

sun beating down creating more molecular links which eventually turn into food

and sewage. If we reclaim all the minerals from the trash THAT would be a great

thing too.

AIO converts just about any trash, and sewage. It converts plastics VERY

efficiently because they are not wet.

> If the entire country abruptly switched to biodynamic

>agriculture, yields would plummet even as soil fertility would start being

>restored. Nor is hydrogen, even when stored as a liquid, anything like as

>dense an energy source as oil -- probably not even nearly as dense as the

>oil produced by the anything-into-oil technology.

No, but hydrogen is free if it is solar. I think if the AIO technology takes

off though, hydrogen will go away, because oil is just so darn easy. Oil isn't a

problem to burn if it is clean and if we stop hauling carbon out of the earth.

The AIO oil, again, is just plain old oil. Nothing special about it.

-- HEidi

[Guest guest]

>so far I havent seen any of the preassure/temp AIO process designed in small

scale for small towns, or even any real quotes as to cost of system set-up. Do

you have info on this? Are there any others persuing this kind of tech other

than the turkey waste promotion folks?

They say they can make small scale ones that fit on a flatbed truck, and the

prototype machines are pretty small. The big ones are huge. So I don't know what

the holdup is. Maybe it's like my house (another technology everyone around here

says can't happen, but I'm living in it). It would almost be worth getting some

investors together and starting a small one just to prove (or disprove as the

case may be) the point.

The turkey waste folks are Butterball, and for them it's mainly to get rid of

turkey waste, but the inventors say it's a poor choice of fuel because it is so

wet. Municipal garbage would be better.

I keep thinking, well, there has GOT to be a catch but I haven't seen it.

Actually I was saying the same thing about the Internet when I was in college:

" WHAT! You can write letters intantaneously to people in other COUNTRIES! With

no phone charges! Why isn't EVERYONE doing this??? Why is the phone company

allowing it? How can it be legal? " I couldn't figure it out ... but suddenly

everyone started doing it and here we are! There are some other really

incredible technologies waiting in the wings too -- they work, but no one has

adopted them for one reason or another. We use some of those technologies here,

and they are great!

I'm guessing that the AIO technology WILL get adopted, but only after the price

of oil goes up to a certain degree or the price of dumping garbage goes up to

the point where it really hurts. People don't try new things until a company

promotes it or until they are really hurting.

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

>Oh, I didn't mean people choose based on CAFE standards, for sure, I was

>thinking of the cost issue. I think you're right though. But the point that

>remains, whether I was right or wrong about the effect on station wagons, is

that

>it is rather silly to oppose the classification of SUVs under trucks.

That's a whole 'nother debate! Then you get into rollovers, size wars, all kinds

of topics!

>> I'll have to test that. It doesn't TASTE acidic.

>

>I don't usually drink rain water, but I've never drank anything we made in

>chem lab either. Distilled water gets down to pH 5 or 6 if it's left in open

>air. Things that taste really acidic like vinegar are usually down around 2,

>aren't they? That's about 1000 times as acidic as something with a pH of 5.

OK, you likely know all this, but for you lurkers, here are the basics. The site

below also has a great map of rain acidity in the US. Interestingly a PH of

lower than 4 is supposed to be enough to change bacterial growth.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/acidrain/2.html

The term " acid rain " is commonly used to mean the deposition of acidic

components in rain, snow, fog, dew, or dry particles. The more accurate term is

" acid precipitation. " Distilled water, which contains no carbon dioxide, has a

neutral pH of 7. Liquids with a pH less than 7 are acid, and those with a pH

greater than 7 are alkaline (or basic). " Clean " or unpolluted rain has a

slightly acidic pH of 5.6, because carbon dioxide and water in the air react

together to form carbonic acid, a weak acid. Around Washington, D.C., however,

the average rain pH is between 4.2 and 4.4.

>hunh. That does say something about who's in the drivers' seat though... the

>producers are filling a demand from the consumers in this scenario. Not sure

>why people wouldn't want good gas mileage though. I hate the fact that I

>only get 30 mpg now, and miss my old car.

Yeah, I'm not saying the manufacturers are the evil empire. Most manufacturers

will make whatever folks will buy, though they will " manufacture " a need if they

can. Our light rail WAS killed by the car manufacturers -- there used to be a

nice train that ran from my town to Seattle and it was shut down, so more folks

would drive, way back in the 30's or 40's.

>> There is a certain consumer acceptance and advertising issue with a lot of

>> these things. I expect people LIKE gas guzzling SUVs -- even BECAUSE they

>> guzzle gas. It's a way of saying " I can AFFORD this!!!! " or even " Take that,

>> liberal tree huggers! " (I heard that attitude from a new Hummer owner).

>

>That's... unfortunate.

Also says something about being a zealot. I think the left has been WAY to

idealistic in some of the lawmaking, to the point of insanity. In her case, she

couldn't cut down a tree she wanted to because of zoning. After that, she turned

anti-environmentalist. Zealots on both sides!

>Well, I was referring to a hypothetical wherein we know it's human-caused and

>we know, or have a good idea, of what kind of change will take place. I was

>saying that if the change does not exceed what causes a major threat to us,

>then, as a value judgment, there's no justification for saying it's wrong to

>modify the climate.

>

>But that's a hypothetical. Right now we don't really know what's going on. I

>agree we should be researching and developing better fuels that pollute less,

>but I think that's true regardless of global warming. If for nothing else,

>because it's ethical and prudent to be efficient.

Exactly.

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

well whats special about your home, and what are these other technologies in the

wings you speak of?

Re: Re: global warming-- consensus?

>so far I havent seen any of the preassure/temp AIO process designed in small

scale for small towns, or even any real quotes as to cost of system set-up. Do

you have info on this? Are there any others persuing this kind of tech other

than the turkey waste promotion folks?

They say they can make small scale ones that fit on a flatbed truck, and the

prototype machines are pretty small. The big ones are huge. So I don't know what

the holdup is. Maybe it's like my house (another technology everyone around here

says can't happen, but I'm living in it). It would almost be worth getting some

investors together and starting a small one just to prove (or disprove as the

case may be) the point.

The turkey waste folks are Butterball, and for them it's mainly to get rid of

turkey waste, but the inventors say it's a poor choice of fuel because it is so

wet. Municipal garbage would be better.

I keep thinking, well, there has GOT to be a catch but I haven't seen it.

Actually I was saying the same thing about the Internet when I was in college:

" WHAT! You can write letters intantaneously to people in other COUNTRIES! With

no phone charges! Why isn't EVERYONE doing this??? Why is the phone company

allowing it? How can it be legal? " I couldn't figure it out ... but suddenly

everyone started doing it and here we are! There are some other really

incredible technologies waiting in the wings too -- they work, but no one has

adopted them for one reason or another. We use some of those technologies here,

and they are great!

I'm guessing that the AIO technology WILL get adopted, but only after the

price of oil goes up to a certain degree or the price of dumping garbage goes up

to the point where it really hurts. People don't try new things until a company

promotes it or until they are really hurting.

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

Heidi-

>No, it produces high-grade oil, without impurities. It is the SAME process

>that produced the oil in the ground, but faster.

Maybe I'm using the wrong terminology (or maybe you are). I believe the

oil produced by the process is lighter than the better types of oil

recovered from the ground.

>Some buildings are making it with solar cells on the roof of the building.

>Obviously

>making hydrogen from gas is silly.

But right now, the only way to get more energy out of hydrogen than we put

in is to extract it from fossil fuels.

And there's another thing you're not considering: the fossil fuel inputs

required not as fuel but as raw materials in the manufacturing of just

about every element of modern technology. I have no figures on solar

cells, but based on the jaw-droppingly astonishing data I saw awhile ago

for computer components, I'm betting they're very, very high.

Here's an article from about a year ago that touches on the subject, though

it seems to be more about the energy requirements of manufacturing.

http://www.nature.com/nsu/021028/021028-12.html

A couple highlights:

>>A typical 2-gram silicon chip requires 1.6 kilograms of fossil fuel, 72

>>grams of chemicals and 32 kilograms of water to manufacture

>>The mass of these secondary materials outweighs the product by a factor

>>of 600. In contrast, making a typical car requires only about twice its

>>weight in fossil fuels.

>As far as AIO efficiency, it has to do with conservation of matter. Take

>our little town, of, say, 20,000 people. It imports gas, food, plastic. It

>exports tons of trash. If all the organics and plastics in the trash were

>turned back into oil, that would get rid of our sewage and landfill

>problem (the AIO can even take smashed refrigerators and recycle them) and

>produce a LOT of oil, even without agricultural byproducts.

I'd be in favor of turning all (most? some?) plastics into oil, but we

should think a lot more biodynamically about our organic waste.

Also, and this is perhaps the key point: even with restored fertility (in a

way, especially with restored fertility) yields, and therefore available

organic mass, will plummet.

>No, but hydrogen is free if it is solar.

Don't forget the energy and materials required to construct the solar cells.

-

[Guest guest]

>well whats special about your home, and what are these other technologies in

the wings you speak of?

I don't know all the stuff they did when they built the house, or which parts

are relevant. It DOES have a lot of insulation, and they put insulation down

before they poured the concrete. And good windows. It has a heat pump, which

helps too, but it has a leak now and we haven't had it on for two years. The

windows are all south facing, so it gets a lot of " greenhouse effect " . They did

stuff with the size of the eaves too. But really, I don't know why it works. It

is very well sealed, for instance, but we have the windows and doors open most

of the day (it tends to get TOO hot) so I don't think the sealing is the issue.

I think a straw bale house would be even better -- they are R50, extremely fire

resistant, soundproof, and cheap to build. But it takes a lot of practice by

builders to come up with good pretty designs, and they just aren't taking the

risk yet.

I'd have to think to get a list of all the technologies I've read, and then

people would want to know WHERE I read them and I read so much I'm not sure I'd

remember, and I'm not in a position to " defend " them either. But it's pretty

much along the lines we've been talking about: " Zero use " houses (they produce

as much electricity as they use), reusable housing (built along the lines of

Erector sets, using metal struts for walls, using plants and fermentation to

detoxify chemicals and waste, combining animals/plants for sustainable and very

productive farms. And some simple stuff that has been around awhile but for some

reason isn't used in this country, like releasing irradiated male mosquitos to

collapse the mosquito population (instead of insecticide spraying, which is less

effective, costs more, and is toxic) or using wasps to kill weevils in stored

grain (again, costs less and is less toxic than the alternatives, and works

good). And then there is my favorite, bacteriophages, which I use in the form of

kefir whey.

As for the technologies WE use that hardly anyone knows about, you know about a

lot of those. Kefir, for example, which is a great probiotic but doesn't cost

much of anything, kimchi, homemade jerky, getting grassfed cows direct from the

farmer. In the programming world, we use a language that makes a programmer

about 10 times as productive as a " normal " programmer (you can read about that

at www.magicsoftware.com if you are into programming).

We did a project with two programmers that usually would take about 50, but

again, no one believes it. We also had a read/write CD in use about 10 years

before they " suddenly " hit the market -- we didn't design it, we just bought it,

but it is amazing how stuff is actually created a long time before it becomes

" known " .

Really, there isn't a day goes by that I don't discover something amazing I've

never heard about. Around here I'm always babbling about something ... reading

science magazines is a LOT more interesting than the evening news!

-- Heidi

>

[Guest guest]

>No, it produces high-grade oil, without impurities. It is the SAME process

>>that produced the oil in the ground, but faster.

>

>Maybe I'm using the wrong terminology (or maybe you are). I believe the

>oil produced by the process is lighter than the better types of oil

>recovered from the ground.

I'm not sure what means " high grade " in terms of oil, for sure. Gas is very

light though, and if I recall correctly is produced from the lighter parts of

the crude oil.

>>Some buildings are making it with solar cells on the roof of the building.

>>Obviously

>>making hydrogen from gas is silly.

>

>But right now, the only way to get more energy out of hydrogen than we put

>in is to extract it from fossil fuels.

????

http://www.solar-h.com/introduction1.html

SHEC has developed a process to produce hydrogen which does not create green

house gases such as CO or CO2. It is " 100% clean and 100% renewable " . We

use only water and sunlight as our only inputs into our proprietary process. The

energy cycle is much like the oxygen cycle of plants and animals. Animals use

oxygen, and give off CO2. Plants on the other hand use CO2 and give off Oxygen.

The hydrogen energy cycle is very similar. Our process takes water and produces

Hydrogen and Oxygen. The oxygen can be released to the atmosphere (or bottled

and sold), while the hydrogen is used as fuel. When the hydrogen is burned, it

takes oxygen from the atmosphere and creates heat, with its by-product being

water.

>And there's another thing you're not considering: the fossil fuel inputs

>required not as fuel but as raw materials in the manufacturing of just

>about every element of modern technology. I have no figures on solar

>cells, but based on the jaw-droppingly astonishing data I saw awhile ago

>for computer components, I'm betting they're very, very high.

That is true now, largely because oil is cheap and that is what they use. All

organic materials can be converted into each other, pretty much, and no one in

that industry has been working on being very efficient OR reusable. No

motivation. Components are getting smaller and using less in the way of

materials, and that trend is expected to continue. Many of the other components

COULD be fixable and reusable, but they are not.

Shoot, I worked in a building that used a HUGE amount of electricity. It was a

single floor building. They wanted to cut some of the lights to save

electricity. I said, why not put in some skylights? Why LIGHT a building when

the sun is out all day? They have these cute little light-pipes you can put on

the roof of a building and pipe the light down to your room, that are simple to

install and pretty cheap.

>>>The mass of these secondary materials outweighs the product by a factor

>>>of 600. In contrast, making a typical car requires only about twice its

>>>weight in fossil fuels.

And all that stuff is made for one-time use. Which is just darn silly and

wasteful. But don't get me wrong -- I agree that we can't keep growing our

population and our incredibly silly use of resources, the system will collapse

at some point. I'd like to see about half our current population and a total

rework of how we use resources.

>I'd be in favor of turning all (most? some?) plastics into oil, but we

>should think a lot more biodynamically about our organic waste.

>

>Also, and this is perhaps the key point: even with restored fertility (in a

>way, especially with restored fertility) yields, and therefore available

>organic mass, will plummet.

??? I'm not sure how you figure this. Given air and water and some minerals,

plants grow, even in lousy soil. They grow even in plain sand. Give them some

probiotics and fungi and they grow better. Hydroponics works good. But if you

actually care for the soil you can grow the topsoil -- we've done it, and they

are doing it in other countries, and they do get good yields. Sometimes better

per acre.

Now if you mean will we have crop failures from the non-existant global warming

--

>>No, but hydrogen is free if it is solar.

>

>Don't forget the energy and materials required to construct the solar cells.

Sure, but again, what is the issue? The original issue is, are we going to run

out of energy and society will collapse. The fact is, currently we are running

with a HUGE waste factor, and could cut our energy (and food) use by about half

without really feeling it. We reclaim next to nothing -- we use stuff, then dump

it in holes in the ground. We use oil because it is cheap, and cheaper than

labor, so we pump it and burn it even knowing it's going to run out. All I'm

saying is that with a modicum of common sense and some investment in research,

we don't *have* to run out of anything. So you use some energy for solar cells

-- if you make them to last a long time, it's a one-shot use. The earth has been

recycling itself for a few billion years, and can continue to do so, supporting

a few billion humans in the process (though with fewer humans, each could likely

live easier!).

-- Heidi