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Plowing Carbon Into the Fields
OzPeter writes "A wheat farmer in Australia has eliminated adding fertilizer to his crop by the simple process of injecting the cooled diesel exhaust of his modified tractor into the ground when the wheat is being sown. In doing so he eliminates releasing carbon into the atmosphere and at the same time saves himself up to $500,000 (AUD) that would have been required to fertilize his 3,900 hectares in the traditional way. Yet his crop yields over the last two years have been at least on par with his best yields since 2001. The technique was developed by a Canadian, Gary Lewis of Bio Agtive, and is currently in trial at 100 farms around the world."
What chemical process is converting the CO2, into not-CO2? He's not burying that carbon deep enough to keep it out of the atmosphere for more than a few days. Best case for him, perhaps some nitrogen compounds in the exhaust are ending up in the soil, but otherwise, this sounds like a gimmick.
It's great that he can inject carbon dioxide during planting, but most farmers use the tractor for more than just planting. Can he inject it into the ground at other times when driving around, or would it disturb the plants? The article didn't say.
If he can really go without fertilizer in the long term, then it may also help with the human impacts on the nitrogen cycle.
Qxe4
Having absolutely no experience with any farming techniques, any real knowledge of the chemical composition of cooled diesel exhaust or even having read the article, I still somehow feel confident enough to give a vague denouncement of this farming technique.
AHEM.
This will never work because the gas will escape/it will poison the ground/I am so much smarter than whoever came up with this.
Thank you, thank you. Love ya Slashdot. Never change.
So few facts, so many opinions.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
What a load of bunk. Let's see if Mythbusters would be willing to bust this myth.
I think the argument to this mechanism is that he is providing an extra carbon source for the nitrogen fixers natively present in the soil. These bacteria convert N2 into ammonia, which can then be absorbed by the plants. Essentially drives the nitrogen cycle more quickly than would occur otherwise. Alternatives in place are to do alternate plantings with plants that have rhizobiums such as legumes.
As to the people saying this is not carbon neutral, I think you should read up on the Haber-bosch process - how ammonia is made for fertilizer. Unlike microbes which can do this at room temperature and pressure, it takes something like 400 C at several times Earth's pressure. This is a very expensive process, and cutting down ammonia production will save a lot of energy.
Funny this sounded familiar, I submitted the story about the Canadian farmer three years ago. That article says it was developed by a farmer named Darrel Carlisle and is generally more informative.
Considering this stuff normally goes into the air and can be brought back down by rainfall... it probably is already in your bread.
That's nothing! NOTHING! Have you even seen what's in pig, chicken, cow, and sheep manure? And they actually use that stuff to grow food. I mean it's the feces of animals, and they're dumping it on our food to make it grow. But somehow the food is okay and safe to eat. Maybe there's something about plants that allows them to thrive on things that are poisonous to us, but allows them to produce fruits and vegetables that are also edible to us.
I have nothing compelling to say
Actually, Diesel normally contains many of the bio elements in there ( along with many others that are NOT good for bio) since it is from biological background. But, there is a shortage of N in there. I suspect that you are right and that the NOx (which Diesel engines generate a LOT of), would be in there and might be fairly useful.
As to the other contaminants, there are already put in the ground. Those that sink in the air will simply land on the ground and soak in. IOW, injecting this in the ground, PROBABLY is decent, and will probably end up being the norm for any diesel powered tractor in another 5 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As has been written in here several times, lotta nitrate compounds in diesel exhaust, even more so than gasoline motor exhaust due to the much higher compression ratios that diesel engines require to run on. Plants need CO2, but they also need nitrates and nitrides in order to grow. As far as carbon compounds in the exhaust, I dunno if they escape the soil (being gaseous) or get bound up to become part of the plants immediately or what. I would have loved to see a more technical article than TFA, that's for sure.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
(Currently, California has no additional land for farming or ranching to meet the needs of the ballooning population.)
California has plenty of land for farming. All along the back of the Sierra Nevada there is a huge valley full of decent land; the problem is water. All the water is being diverted into LA for drinking. If LA starts getting their water from the ocean, then we can begin to grow stuff there. The foothills would be another potential place to start growing, if the water were there. Also, if we really need to, we can switch from crops like almonds to crops like wheat or oats.
Wait. Now, you ask, "How will banning immigration help?"
Anti-immigration laws are like the war on drugs: neither one works. You may not realize it, but after drugs, one of the best sources of income for organized crime is human-trafficking: sneaking poor people into rich countries. If you continue to support anti-immigration laws, you will continue to support violence, human exploitation, and all the other problems that come with organized crime. There is no way to stop it. The only thing to do is legalize it.
People who worry about overpopulation don't realize that if we increase women's rights and reduce poverty in developing nations, the problem will take care of itself.
Qxe4
I am a farmer in Canada and fertilizer does not cost 1200 to 1500 a tonne. There's no way in hell it costs half a million dollars to fertilize 3900 HA of wheat. Injecting diesel exhaust fumes in a single planting pass to totally fertilize each HA of wheat sounds like junk science to me.
You could fix overpopulation and starving with exactly the one thing. Cannibalism.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
First, Diesel COMES from degraded bio matter. So, what is in there? MOSTLY, the same stuff. That means that is contains the same micro elements. As other have pointed out, NOx are being generated and it would appear that these are also being injected. As to the nasty stuff, ALL of those will ALWAYS be generated in a diesel system. AND just about ALL will SINK TO THE GROUND. So wether you inject it into the soil, OR you lay it on the top, it is the same. The question is, is it a small amount? If it is, then not a big deal. And it would appear to be the case.
This approach makes good sense ASSUMING that you are using a diesel tractor. I am guessing that this will be the norm in another 5 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's nice that you're so sure actual scientists know less than you, and that there's no such thing as nitrogen fixing bacteria, and that they sure aren't fucking anaerobic and like CO2. Christ.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
So do you. Potassium and Phosphorus, as well as most, if not all of the micro elements are in diesel. Why? Because it CAME FROM BIO-MATTER IN THE FIRST PLACE. Hell, where do you think that FERTILIZER COMES FROM? What is missing is N. BUT, as other pointed out, nitrogen fixing bacteria and NOx may well do the job.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I found the article by "The Economist". The article debunks the claim that increasing wealth results in a decreasing population. The implications for excessive population growth are alarming.
Anti-immigration laws are like the war on drugs: neither one works. You may not realize it, but after drugs, one of the best sources of income for organized crime is human-trafficking: sneaking poor people into rich countries. If you continue to support anti-immigration laws, you will continue to support violence, human exploitation, and all the other problems that come with organized crime. There is no way to stop it. The only thing to do is legalize it.
All you need to do to end it is require proof of citizenship(that's actaully checked out) to get hired in this country. Then charge companies who don't comply with rico laws (sieze their assests etc) . This will never happen since companies make too much money off the backs of illegal immigrants working for less than minimum wage.
In other words, the whole thing is pure BS, and very very slighly bad for the crops, and there are many many rather nasty chemicals in diesel exhaust.
Read the thread to see why your complaint about nitrogen isn't valid. You can't make up for your slight knowledge of the subject by more aggressively declaring yourself correct.
Or you can read the article and see that CO2 helps anaerobic bacteria that also happen to be nitrogen fixers...guess the journalists know more than you, after all.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
The ONLY one gripping appears to be you. Of course, I am guessing that you grip about any environmentalist no matter what they do. Whats more, I am also going to guess that you will be decrying these guys work in just a short bit as causing a lose of money to oil companies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not that blowing it into the atmosphere is much better, but doesn't diesel exhaust contain all sorts of nasty toxins?
I don't recall the exact exhaust gas composition, but in my younger days working at a research lab we participated in a series of animal studies on diesel exhaust. You could pump a lot of diesel exhaust through lab animals without any serious side effects. Some of the high dose groups had lungs that looked like they had been smoking, but none of them died from toxins in the exhaust. I don't remember there being any statistical correlation to cancers or cell differentiation, either. But that was a long time ago.
My vague memory of the conclusions were that you breath a lot of diesel exhaust without harmful side effects, although the particulates would keep your pulmonary macrophage in business.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Fertilizer is nitrogen and phosphorus. Exhaust is carbon and oxygen. Can one pair really be replaced by the other?
"The exhaust gases are believed to stimulate microbial activity and root growth, allowing the plants to more efficiently extract nutrient and moisture from the soil."
What keeps the injected CO2 from leaking back out?
"The system relies on attraction between negatively-charged ions in the gases and the soil’s positively charged alkaline component to hold the gases in the soil, as well as sealing it in."
http://abovecapricorn.blogspot.com/2009/10/soil-carbon-may-come-from-tractor.html
Immigration is already legal. It's those that try and skip the system in place that give it a bad name. I know many legal immigrants and they hate illegal immigrants more than native Americans because they (the illegals) just made it harder for them (the legals) to follow the rules.
While it sounds good in theory a stagnate or declining population is also an aging population which brings about it's own problems. Pretty much all successful species will populate to the limits of their resources. For us, the only necessary resource is energy. It's use and abundance is perhaps the only thing that will ever limit our growth.
I seem to recall something like 2/3 of the Earth's land cannot currently be used for crops because of salt. Enter desalination(plenty of water on the Earth) and genetic engineering.
If that problem is solved we could theoretically reach 18 billion people or more. We could also cultivate and utilize the oceans better. I do not think we are anywhere near shaping the Earth's ecosystem to completely benefit us.
After that, on to the stars!
PS Ant's global biomass is between 900 million and 9 billion tonnes. Human's global biomass is a mere 100 million tonnes. That's a lot of ants and I don't think they're worried. source
Have you even seen what's in pig, chicken, cow, and sheep manure?
Bullshit.
It seems to be these days that there are a lot of people that can't possibly believe there are any ecological solutions that don't involve the massive reduction in human emissions. When the talk is about global warming and reducing carbon output, they are on board and scream "You aren't a scientist, you have to listen to the scientists!" to anyone who questions it. However, when scientists have any other solution, one that DOESN'T involve an emission reduction, they get pissed off, and denounce those scientists. Suddenly they are experts in all the reasons that must be wrong.
A good example of this is what has happened with the new book Super Freakonomics. Levitt does the same thing he does in the original Freakonomics of stripping away morality from various issues and applying economics. His original book drew ire from conservative types because it presented a convincing argument that legalized abortion has lead to a reduction in crime, but liberal types were generally ok with it.
Well, now he's become someone high up on the enemies list because in Super Freakonomics he analyzes the economics of combating global arming through geoengineering methods, rather than reducing emissions. Note that he doesn't say it isn't real or isn't a problem, just looks at different solutions as being more economically feasible. Yet that has drawn massive ire from the environmentalist types.
It just seems to be an article of faith these days that the only thing good for the environment is to use less. Any solutions that involves anything else is shouted down. This being the same sort of thing. People point to science as the ultimate bastion of truth... so long as what it shows agrees with their world view. Any time something contrary comes out, all of a sudden they are the experts instead of the scientists.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're right that NOx is a tiny fraction of the output, still N2 makes up over 75% of the fumes. It is thought diesel particulates can act as microscopic sponges and help soil absorbtion of nitrogen and other compounds. Still, little is known as to why this works which is why it is in a controlled trial development stage so scientists can study it. They've found reduced soil pH, increased nitrogen absorbtion and other good things, so the question isn't if it works but why it works.
This won't do. I guess he is not telling the whole story.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
You should go hang out with illegal immigrants sometime, you would learn something.
Here's how it works: all the family pools their money together to make the downpayment. The price varies depending on where they come from. Mexico will run around $2000 to $5000 but a trip from China will cost $20,000. Of course a Chinese peasant can't pay all that at once, so they come to America, and work, and pay it off while they are here. Of course it takes time, but they pay it off, otherwise something might happen to their family back at home.
So yes, poor people are the ones who get snuck into the US. Middle class/rich people usually have no desire to come here, at least not the ones I've talked to.
Qxe4
I found the article by "The Economist". The article debunks the claim that increasing wealth results in a decreasing population. The implications for excessive population growth are alarming.
You didn't find an article that backs your assertion. There are at least two effects to note. First, high HDI countries (which boils down to high GDP per capita countries) tend to have high immigration by more fertile populations from low HDI countries. Second, that hypothetical increased fertility rate is spread over a longer period (ie, people having children later) which results in lower population growth.
My vague memory of the conclusions were that you breath a lot of diesel exhaust without harmful side effects, although the particulates would keep your pulmonary macrophage in business.
We can mandate that in our next economic stimulus plan.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
As has been mentioned here before, the point of fertilizer is to provide nitrogen, and to a lesser extent, phosphorus and sulfur, not carbon. So how is diesel exhaust providing those elements in sufficient quantity? It's worth noting that this farmer has only been doing it for two years. That's far too short to make the sort of claims he's making.
Doing the math, he's claiming that he saves on about 400 tons of fertilizer for a 3900 hectare farm by pumping roughly 4,000 tons of diesel exhaust into the soil. At a glance, most of this is water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. There's a little bit of nitrogen oxides and sulfur. But I don't see the advantage. I'm wondering, if he's getting some nitrogen and other elements from the death of necessary fauna in his soil. That is, he might be getting a couple of good years of crops by killing off most of his earthworms, nematodes, and other animals in the soil who would be poisoned by excess CO2 and CO levels.
I believe that the previous poster may have made the same brilliant intellectual leap that I independently made, and went to the Company's web page.
There you will find a video:
http://www.bioagtive.com/index.php?p=0&videoID=852
that is full of fascinating information about the process, and explains it much more coherently than 4th person version of the events that we get from Slashdot's summary.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
That so-called study is a fine example of lying with statistics - see debunking here http://www.stubbornmule.net/2009/09/baby-bounce/
It's been successfully tested in Canada in cooperation with the National Research council, among other places. Go to the site and watch the TV news videos if you're too lazy to actually read anything.
All you need to do to end it is require proof of citizenship(that's actaully checked out) to get hired in this country. Then charge companies who don't comply with rico laws (sieze their assests etc) . This will never happen since companies make too much money off the backs of illegal immigrants working for less than minimum wage.
This is how it is in this country (DK), and it hasn't stopped illegal immigration. It beats me how anyone can live in DK without a CPR (roughly eq. to US social security number), yet it is a well-known fact that it happens. Besides, I don't think a democratic population could live without allowing some kind of immigation/emmigration; e.g. in the case of marriage.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Actually, increasingly we don't plough or plow in Australia as a large proportion of dryland agriculture has shifted to no till / direct drill. Which has massively improved soil health.
A consequence of which is that injecting exhaust would be difficult for many arable farmers here.
Incidentally, I lived for a number of years within a few miles of where this guy is. In that region generally no nitrogen fertiliser is used and phosphorous is a) only applied every couple of years or so, and b) generally applied greatly in excess. So the reports that no fertiliser has been used without an impact on the crop for two seasons aren't really much evidence of anything yet...
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Do you really want to spend the last years of your life in an old farts' home, watching Coronation Street, waiting to die? Fuck that!
If that's your idea of "retirement", just pull the f*ing plug now and spare us your waste of oxygen.
Actually that's your idea of retirement, it certainly doesn't have to be that way and thats not just a question of money. It's not a bad thing to allow people to work beyond pensionable age if they wish too maybe volunteer work could be better than shifts in Macdonald's, finance shouldn't be the reason. Thats a key point at that age you should be able to decide what you want to do with your life and watching coronation st isn't an aim.
I've come close to dying twice this year I got out of hospital on Friday and the last thing I want is to die anytime soon. I have a lot more living to do yet. There is no good reason why I can't be doing pretty much the same range of activities in my 60's and beyond that I am capable of now. I'm a bit more focused on living and getting healthier knowing that I am only alive today thanks to modern medicine. Thirty years ago I would have died about 4 months ago.
Odds of my making it to retirement are a bit piss poor to be honest, however there is no reason to quit just yet.
Quit smoking eat less, fats especially , keep active mentally and physically and then you might get the choice of sitting in your slippers watching coronation st - you probably still wouldn't want to.
It's strange to me that 90% of the things we can buy to eat today damage us so that by the time we hit retirement age we are about ready to croak. You don't think about this till the damage is done usually but it doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to make healthier choices and thats whats going to save you from Coronation st.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Suppose that humankind made a concerted attempt to voluntarily produce less children. Our population declines from 6 billion to 3 billion. Then, humankind does not need so much food and so much energy. The farmer in this thread of discussion can shutdown his farm and engage in another activity.
Brilliant idea, but it falls flat due to one simple reason: evolution. Whoever doesn't go with this, whoever produces more children than they should, for whatever reason as long as it is affected by genes at least a bit, will have an evolutionary advantage.
So, whatever you do to reduce population growth, evolution will counter it. Those that were "resistant" to you method of population control will prosper and spread their "resistant" genes. Absent-minded, careless and/or uncaring people are resistant to birth control methods. People with strong maternal/paternal instinct are resistant to high standard of living and active lifestyle reducing number of children. Etc.
No, the only way to sensibly limit number of people is to decide how many people there should be. Then if there are too many, have peope fight each other until only desired amount is left. Not only would it solve the overpopulation problem, it'd make great reality TV too ("Remember, you could be the next Real Survivor(tm)!").
People have 14 kids because that way at least some of them are likely to survive to continue the line and take care of their parents in their old age. Population growth usually levels off once medicine reaches the level where surviving to adulthood is the rule rather than exception, and social services provide for you whether you have children or not.
Some do, some don't. Religions typically reflect the values of the society that spawned them, and some of the older ones have grown more civilized with time. There are people who wish to oppress others in the name of their God, but they'd simply use a different excuse if religion was not available ("one race, one nation, one leader" / "will of the proletariat" / "taxes are robbery" / etc).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I wonder if the effect is in any way similar to what has been observed in terra preta. Terra preta (black dirt) is a unique man-made type of soil produced by mixing in lots of carbon, in the form of charcoal. The technique was used to convert nutrient poor soil in the Amazon rain forest into some of the richest land on earth. It was produced thousands of years ago, no less. Before the discovery of terra preta, it was largely assumed that rain forest soil could never be rich enough for productive agriculture, because the heavy rains cause all the important nutrients to leach out. The carbon apparently helps the sequester these nutrients, which would otherwise be lost. What's more, terra preta appears to be regenerative - i.e. it gets richer all by itself.
While I respect your modest proposal, I've always felt that human flesh to be a bit gamey. Even as a zombie I still prefer chicken.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Are you off on your overpopulation maunderings again?
The world isn't overpopulated. It is likely that most of the parts of the world you think are overpopulated (with the notable exceptions of China and India) have lower population densities than the parts you think are not overpopulated.
If the world were overpopulated, we've already proved out a simple, humane solution to the problem - raise everyone's standard of living to that of the USA and Western Europe. Then birthrates will fall naturally to low enough levels that population will decline.
Course, in that case, there's not yet any reason to believe that the population decline will STOP, but that's a problem for another day.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I know some people who work in fast foods and hire a fair number of immigrants. Why? At the amount is he allowed by management to pay them, he can't get Americans with a work ethic to apply for the job. But it keeps the hamburgers cheap.
Anyway, first time he got a bad Soc card (I think they actually mis-spelled security on it) he brought it to his boss and asked him what to do about it. Boss said "I'm not trained in identifying legitimate social security cards, are you?" and told him to put down that they presented him with a card.
Another time someone's ID got hit by a random check and was found to be bad. They hired him back the next day when he came back with a better card.
There would have to be so much more government oversight than there is currently to actually have a chance of stopping this. And even then:
Fast food wages would have to increase drastically to get people to work there (not saying it's entirely a bad thing, but it has consequences, such as..).
Food prices would increase to match.
A lot of good (but illegal) people would be out of work. My friend doesn't hire people just because they're cheap - he's looking for good people who are solid workers, same as any employer.
Our large portions of our economy built on cheap labor would collapse. We lost full-service gas stations when they implemented minimum wage laws. A lot of the bottom end of our economy would fall out.
I'm not saying that this is a good situation - I'm saying it's the situation we have right now with illegal immigration. Personally I think we could fix 90% of the problems if we just let the damn people immigrate legally. I have another friend who is trying to get citizenship - even as a college-educated person with an upper-middle class job (ie, not someone walking across the border with no job and few prospects) it will take her between seven and fourteen years. Do people honestly think that people would pay thousands of dollars to smugglers, risk their lives and possessions to sneak across the border to work at a fast food joint if standing in line were a reasonable option?
As an interesting note - my friend is losing a lot of his Mexican workers soon. The DMV introduced much more stringent ID requirements to be able to renew a license plate. Since most of them want to lay as low as possible - they have valid plates and most of them have accident insurance - not being able to get a valid plate is causing them to move on to other states that aren't as strict.
You've obviously not spent a lot of time looking at US Census data. Excluding immigration (and the related reproduction - immigrants don't tend to live at the standard of living of the US and Western Europe for several generations), US population has been on the decline for the last several decades.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Well, self-service is a gain, IMHO. I avoid filling up in Weymouth, MA, and I fill up right before entering Jersey. Why? "Full Service" is no longer full-service staffed by entry-level mechanics or senior mechanics manning the pumps during slow times; it's now mouth breathers, and NOT full service. They don't clean your windshield, check your fluids, or the air pressure in your tires. What they do is top off the tank, keep clicking the pump until they can't get any more in (often times damaging your charcoal canister), scratch your paint, and be rude to you. Why should I pay a premium to damage my car?
In SOME rare cases a "loss" in service is actually a net gain. I'd rather get out, fill it myself, taking care to not overfill, not scratch the paint, and clean the window without leaving streaks, and clean the back window if it needs it. The ONLY drawbacks are my hands smelling like gasoline for a short while, and dealing with cold in the winter.
Now, if "full service" were the full service that used to be in place through the '70s, I'd agree.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Dude, I'm French and even by trying the legal way (visa lottery) I didn't get anything. Even if I had the chance to be picked by the computer, it would have taken two years before I would have been allowed to move to the USA. Fortunately being European if I want to move to a decent country I can just move to some place like Ireland (which I did).
Mexicans aren't even eligible to that visa lottery thing. That doesn't leave them a lot of solutions, unless they've got close family in the USA. Immigration law in the USA is completely absurd, and it makes illegals because it leaves so many people without any legal solution.
Think about it, a hundred years ago all you had to do was show up at Ellis Island and if you didn't have tuberculosis you were in. Now you can be Australian or English and if you manage to get in you live under the permanent threat of deportation for no good reason.
You just got troll'd!
The most gruesome war ever, the IIWW, left 65 million dead
Was World War II really the -worst- war ever? Sure, in terms of numbers, it may seem that way, but if we turn to the Islamic expansion, or, any of the conquests of ancient times, we find entire civilizations and cultures were simply evaporated. After World War II, Germans were still predominantly German speaking and Christian (except for what was once called East Prussia), but, after the Islamic conquest of Egypt, the native tongue was completely eradicated and a 3000 year old religion was destroyed. Or, look at the essential extermination of Celtic cultures due to Roman incursions from the South and Asian cultures from the East... People were going house to house, killing the men, the children, taking the women, basically raping them, and then producing new children to a new culture. Compared to that, firebombing might almost seem civilized. I would even bet that the likes of Julius Caesar or Genghis Khan would see Hitler's invasion of Russia as probably even a bunch of pussies.
This is my sig.
I smoked for 30 years and quitting in the end was easy. In all that time I reckon I quit for a fortnight and I quit for 2 Months.
On the 18th of July at about 6:45 I had a coronary I was strong but unfit and thats when I smoked my last cigarette waiting for an Ambulance. I probably wouldn't have smoked it had I known what was going on.
Smoking narrows the arteries and that makes it easier for blood clots to lodge and block the arteries. If the artery is feeding the heart muscle then the starvation of oxygenated blood causes the heart muscle to die and in time be replaced by scar tissue. It never pumps so well again. If it gets badly damaged it can't pump and everything dies. The blood clots are created when fat deposited on your artery walls after years of crappy food tears maybe after doing something or nothing.
Strokes are similar , blockage of an artery taking oxygenated blood to the brain.
Cancer is a gamble and no one thinks they will lose so its not a reason to quit smoking the artery problem is.
I quit smoking by means of Niquitin patches and it was easy although I modified the program i changed the patches when I needed to change the patches it might be 12 hours or 48 hours I just let my body decide when it was low on nicotine. In a social situation where I was around other people smoking I put a fresh patch on and after a few minutes i got a reassuring itch where the patch was. other than that it was 4 weeks on high 2 weeks on medium and 2 weeks on low. That was pretty easy. I don't need a cigarette now , I want a cigarette some times but I know i would start again so I don't. I have a few spare patches so i can put one on if i really want the nicotine, I have done that once or twice.
I'm feeling good for quitting and its hopefully dropping the risks of another heart attack, even so the stats suggest 50% of survivors die in 6 - 8 years most of them in the first year. 30% died from the first heart attack. So I'm lucky already.
Everyone says I should quit smoking and nobody does because withdrawal turns us into grumpy nasty people, well the patches work I smoothly managed to quit, so having read this I hope you see that you can too.
Don't die younger than you have too try and avoid the first heart attack.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Perhaps Islam is, and Catholicism was, and maybe Mormon is still just a little bit, but if you read the New Testament you'll see that the first person who saw Christ resurrected was a woman. What is notable about that? A woman was not considered to be a credible witness in Roman-occupied Israel.If someone were to make up the story, he'd have chosen a man to be the witness, not a woman.
Also, it's worth noting that the feminist movement here in America didn't start out as a man-hating movement. It started out as a Christian organization founded by mainstream Protestants pushing for voting rights and for a little respect. That's about it. It has long since been corrupted into a almost-strictly-lesbian "we don't need men except as sperm donors" movement that, like affirmative action does with racism, only serves to perpetuate problems rather than resolve them. Women CAN earn the same as men, but if a woman decides to raise a child, well, that woman just decided to take weeks to years out of work. This reduces her reliability and experience compared to her competition (either childless women or men) and thus should reduce the amount of compensation she should be entitled to, unless she is willing to hop jobs rather than proclaim "entitlement" and demand the same raises everyone else who didn't take time off received.
The sad reality is women have to choose between child rearing or their career if maintaining the same pay level as a man is her goal; OR telecommute RELIABLY and have at least a moderate amount of "face time" at the office, OR start a home business so there are no significant gaps in experience.
Me? I have no choice to focus on my career. I'm intersexed and sterile, so there isn't any child rearing in my future at all, barring miracles or modern science being able to regenerate organs. It's simply not going to happen, so when I am working for "the man" there are no gaps in my experience, so I get paid on par with peers. *shrug* YMMV, batteries not included, and all that.
It all comes down to what everyone seems to shun nowadays: personal respnsibility and merit. Everyone "feels" "entitled" to a pony, or a big screen TV, or a McMansion, or a BMW, Caddie, Porsche or Lexus. Sorry, life doesn't and shouldn't work like that. You can't make both childen and career your priority. If you try to, you'll be both a lousy provider and a lousy parent, in that you'll be more distant from your children than you'd like. Pay should be awarded based on merit, not based on gender, color, religion, sexual orientation, or based on the company one keeps or what secret societies one belongs to.
On a tangent: There is a lot to be said for the "nuclear" family where the mom is the homemaker and the father is the sole provider, but there's a lot more going for more traditional families where the grandparents and aunts and uncles (an entire clan) lives and works together, helping everyone out, where the man might be making a very good living working for someone, and the mother might have a part-to-full-time business. Unfortunately, modern society has driven housing costs out of sight, women have been pressured to work (even when they would prefer to be full-time "homemakers"), and usually have to in order to afford third-to-half million dollar homes in most densely-populated states. Also, modern society has discouraged clans, painting them as antiquated and outmoded ways of living, whereas it is actually more efficient and ideal, aside from some, uh, "privacy" issues.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Middle class/rich people usually have no desire to come here
I second this. My wife's American and so for family reasons we moved to the US. Didn't like and so we moved on to Canada. Still close enough for family visits but with decent public education, health care and less toxic politics (only downside is that the border is pain in the buttocks).
I can't believe this unsupported crap got modded up. Citation Needed.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Not sure what diesel engines you've been dealing with, but I've never seen one without a throttle. Tractors most certainly do, changing gears is one methods of changing speeds of course, but the most certainly do have throttles in many if not all cases of engines aren't bottom of the barrel as cheap as it gets.
Even without a throttle they don't burn perfectly, ever. Its used to limit the air and fuel entering the combustion chamber. If done properly it simply results in less than the maximum amount entering the combustion chamber. With fuel injection engines it should not result in an improper ration of air to fuel, just less of both. The same is true to traditional carburetor engines, but due to the methods employed the ratio tends to never be optimal.
Diesel fuel contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and some alkyl derivatives. Both groups of compounds may survive the combustion process. Between that and the soot, those are your reasons for not sucking the exhaust pipe of your tractor. Not the level of CO coming out. Diesel is dirty, CO is hardly the concern. You think they put oil based filters on the exhaust to catch CO? No. You think all that black you see pooring out of the engine under high load is CO? No.
Carbon monoxide is a serious threat when its inhaled in large quantities as it inhibits the bloods ability to carry oxygen, in smaller quantities its not a problem, the body deals with carbon monoxide in our atmosphere by simply replacing the cells that have been rendered useless by carbon monoxide.
Its not a toxin so much as an oxygen transfer inhibitor. More than slight difference. To much of it and you suffocate.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
A petrol engine has a throttle that restricts the flow of air into the engine, because the air and fuel must be mixed in a precise ratio for the engine to run. A diesel engine doesn't have this - the air intake is wide open all the time. To control the engine power, you only turn up or down the amount of fuel injected. At all times there's an excess of air, unless you're massively overfuelling in which case you get smelly black smoke and poor performance.
Not sure what diesel engines you've been dealing with, but I've never seen one without a throttle.
A diesel engine receives fuel based on RPM and, you hope, load. The pedal in the car controls the maximum position of a governor which controls maximum fuel delivery. As the engine approaches this speed (as output meets load) the fuel delivery decreases until a given RPM is reached. Or in the words of a pedant, a diesel has an accelerator pedal, but no throttle. In a carbureted vehicle the throttle controls both air and fuel delivery directly. In fuel-injected gasoline vehicles, the pedal usually controls an intake restrictor butterfly valve, and a throttle position sensor which instructs the computer (in unison with the oxygen sensor.) Diesels should have as much intake air as possible.
Even without a throttle they don't burn perfectly, ever.
True.
If done properly it simply results in less than the maximum amount entering the combustion chamber. With fuel injection engines it should not result in an improper ration of air to fuel, just less of both.
In both fuel injected and carbureted engines you err on the side of richness, and during closed loop operation (e.g. cruising, idle, deceleration, or mild acceleration) the mixture continually bounces to either side of rich and lean. The catalytic converter smooths out the rich and lean spots before they become emissions, because it swings back and forth several times a second.
You think all that black you see pooring out of the engine under high load is CO? No.
No, that's partly those PAHs and partly unburned hydrocarbons, one of the primary bad guys when it comes to emissions. The NOx output of diesels is only significant in the aggregate; it's higher than that of typical gasoline-powered vehicles. Biodiesel has more NOx, but less CO. Nitric oxides are a major component of acid rain.
in smaller quantities its not a problem, the body deals with carbon monoxide in our atmosphere by simply replacing the cells that have been rendered useless by carbon monoxide.
but I was using those.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Look at all these carcinogens
All in extremely low quantities and most of which are filtered out/ broken down by modern DPF and/or SCR.
Diesel is not the dirty thing of yesteryear. Reports of hazardous exhaust is greatly exaggerated and outdated. Basically the only thing that comes out of the tailpipe is CO2 and H2O.
And yes I am a diesel emissions engineer.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1566471/
Our meta-analysis of the low-exposure data in rats does not support a lung cancer risk for DEP exposure at nonoverload conditions.
Effects on fetus development are less well understood. Development of tumors in humans routinely exposed to diesel exhaust had not, at that time, been corrected for secondary environmental conditions (like smoking and air quality). Those studies may have been updated since then.
The rodents in our experiments got a lot of diesel fumes on a daily basis and didn't show any ill effects, either in terms of overall lifetime or increased cancer rates. There are a lot of good reasons to wean ourselves from dependence on foreign oil and cut our use of fossil fuels for transportation, but the facts are the facts. Diesel exhaust is uncomfortable but relatively harmless at moderate levels of exposure.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage