Petroleum is not used to make fertilizer. The production of nitrogen fertilizer uses natural gas (mostly CH4) as a feedstock but it's the hydrogen that they're after. The carbon is released as CO2 and doesn't go into the fertilizer. Carbon is something plants absorb from the atmosphere, not the soil.
Yes, physically there is no difference between the CO2 you exhale and the CO2 from a Hummer. But that's not the issue. The issue where the carbon in emitted CO2 comes from. Did it come from carbon in the active carbon cycle or carbon that's been out of the cycle for hundreds of millions of years? If it's from the first it makes no net difference to the environment, if it's from the second you are adding carbon to the active carbon cycle. If you can't understand the distinction between those things maybe it's you who is the moron.
He said that your breath while cycling is more harmful to the environment than your breath while driving a car, as you release more CO2 because of the physical exertion.
What he (and you apparently) fail to realize is that the CO2 you exhale has zero harmful effect on the environment. The carbon in the CO2 you exhale comes from CO2 that is drawn from the atmosphere by the plants you eat in the first place* **. After all, the environment has been humming merrily along for well over 500 million years while animals exhaled CO2 yet the levels in the atmosphere have generally been going down in all of that time. What is harmful to the environment is taking carbon that's been sequestered from the environment and not part of the active carbon cycle for 100's of millions of years and putting it back in rapidly. If we took the CO2 we've emitted over the past couple hundred years and spread it out over a couple thousand years the effects wouldn't be bad because the environment would have plenty of time to adjust.
* Or the plant the animals you eat ate.
** Yes I'm ignoring the fact that a lot of fossil fuel energy goes into producing, delivering and preparing your food but it's possible to produce the energy needed by other means that don't produce a net increase in CO2. It's technologically feasible to do that right now but economically it will take 30-50 years to build out the infrastructure necessary to make the transition from fossil fuels.
It's true that as our current food system is constructed there is a carbon footprint built in but it's possible to do everything the we do in the food system without generating net CO2 from fossil fuels (not that I'm saying it's easy, just possible).
Not to take away from your comment which is spot on it should be noted that Orcutt is in the state assembly in Olympia, WA rather than a Congressman in DC.
I think the lack of nuclear power plants in the US has more to do with the cost and time it takes to build one compared to a coal plant than it does with any anti-nuclear sentiment by environmentalists.
You ignore the fact that microbes have been breaking down plant matter and releasing carbon dioxide from (nearly) the time life started on the Earth without causing any appreciable change in CO2 levels on time scales of less than millennia. In particular for the past ~8,000 years CO2 levels hovered around 280 ppm even though the microbial breakdown of plant matter continued apace and for the past at least 1 million years the CO2 levels varied between 180 ppm and 380 ppm even though that process continued. So why would the current breakdown of plant material by microbes be causing a sharp change in CO2 now when it didn't in the past?
You should have said in prehistoric times CO2 was far higher than it is today. It's probably been at least 20 million years since CO2 was as high as it is now.
One technique I've seen in science fiction is to get an asteroid of the appropriate size and composition, use large mirrors heat it to a molten state with solar energy, blow a large air bubble in the middle of the molten blob then let it cool. That gives you a nice robust outer shell to base your habitat on.
Same AC here. That could work. You'd have to include enough power to keep the habitat warm too. Probably the best power source for them would be a nuclear reactor similar to the ones used on spacecraft only bigger. That would last a decade or more. With PV you'd have to have enough batteries to last overnight and through the occasional dust storm.
-1 Offtopic. Although they have things in common a weather model is not a climate model. In fact TFP you refer to complains that some of the computer resources used for climate modeling would be better spent to improve the US's numerical weather modeling.
The basis of this report is work that has been done in occupational studies about how temperature and humidity affect your ability to work. That's pretty easy to control and measure in a lab. The results of those studies that are used by all sorts of employers including the US military to understand how much they can expect of their employees under various conditions. By synthesizing those results with the expected changes due to AGW they came up with an estimate of how it will affect human labor output. I don't see anything dumb about that.
The stuff at Hanford is not bundled up in nice neat easy to store spent fuel rods like at nuclear power plants. Some of these tanks were built over 60 years ago and it's remarkable that they've held up as well as they have.
None of this would have been avoided if Yucca Mountain was open. The stuff in these tanks are not nice neat spent fuel rods like power reactors produce but the nasty leftovers from the Pu-239 extraction process in a liquid slurry form full of all sorts of radioactive isotopes and heavy metals. You can't just load that in a tanker and truck it down to Yucca Mountain. You have to reduce it to a solid form safe (enough) to handle first. The glassification plant they're building is supposed to go on line in 2018 but with the problems they're having I think 2020 or so is more realistic.
The stuff in those tanks is nasty leftovers from the Plutonium-239 extraction process, too nasty for humans to get anywhere near. I think it behooves us to take any leaks seriously. Once a leak starts it can get bigger. Better to try and deal with it before it does.
I doubt there was much development of nuclear power reactors going on at Hanford. It was mainly about producing Plutonium and Uranium for the US nuclear weapons programs. No doubt they learned things that later got applied to power reactors but that wasn't their focus.
Hanford is not just any nuclear plant. There were 9 reactors built there between 1943 and 1963 to produce Plutonium-239 and Uranium-233 for the US nuclear weapons programs. Most of the waste in these tanks is not from the reactors themselves but leftovers from the Pu-239 extraction process, not something power reactors have to deal with. All that's stored at power reactors are spent fuel rods (a problem but not nearly as nasty as the stuff at Hanford).
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Petroleum is not used to make fertilizer. The production of nitrogen fertilizer uses natural gas (mostly CH4) as a feedstock but it's the hydrogen that they're after. The carbon is released as CO2 and doesn't go into the fertilizer. Carbon is something plants absorb from the atmosphere, not the soil.
Yes, physically there is no difference between the CO2 you exhale and the CO2 from a Hummer. But that's not the issue. The issue where the carbon in emitted CO2 comes from. Did it come from carbon in the active carbon cycle or carbon that's been out of the cycle for hundreds of millions of years? If it's from the first it makes no net difference to the environment, if it's from the second you are adding carbon to the active carbon cycle. If you can't understand the distinction between those things maybe it's you who is the moron.
He said that your breath while cycling is more harmful to the environment than your breath while driving a car, as you release more CO2 because of the physical exertion.
What he (and you apparently) fail to realize is that the CO2 you exhale has zero harmful effect on the environment. The carbon in the CO2 you exhale comes from CO2 that is drawn from the atmosphere by the plants you eat in the first place* **. After all, the environment has been humming merrily along for well over 500 million years while animals exhaled CO2 yet the levels in the atmosphere have generally been going down in all of that time. What is harmful to the environment is taking carbon that's been sequestered from the environment and not part of the active carbon cycle for 100's of millions of years and putting it back in rapidly. If we took the CO2 we've emitted over the past couple hundred years and spread it out over a couple thousand years the effects wouldn't be bad because the environment would have plenty of time to adjust.
* Or the plant the animals you eat ate.
** Yes I'm ignoring the fact that a lot of fossil fuel energy goes into producing, delivering and preparing your food but it's possible to produce the energy needed by other means that don't produce a net increase in CO2. It's technologically feasible to do that right now but economically it will take 30-50 years to build out the infrastructure necessary to make the transition from fossil fuels.
It's true that as our current food system is constructed there is a carbon footprint built in but it's possible to do everything the we do in the food system without generating net CO2 from fossil fuels (not that I'm saying it's easy, just possible).
What a bullshit statement. You don't need money to speak freely, it just helps to amplify your speech.
Not to take away from your comment which is spot on it should be noted that Orcutt is in the state assembly in Olympia, WA rather than a Congressman in DC.
I think the lack of nuclear power plants in the US has more to do with the cost and time it takes to build one compared to a coal plant than it does with any anti-nuclear sentiment by environmentalists.
You ignore the fact that microbes have been breaking down plant matter and releasing carbon dioxide from (nearly) the time life started on the Earth without causing any appreciable change in CO2 levels on time scales of less than millennia. In particular for the past ~8,000 years CO2 levels hovered around 280 ppm even though the microbial breakdown of plant matter continued apace and for the past at least 1 million years the CO2 levels varied between 180 ppm and 380 ppm even though that process continued. So why would the current breakdown of plant material by microbes be causing a sharp change in CO2 now when it didn't in the past?
You should have said in prehistoric times CO2 was far higher than it is today. It's probably been at least 20 million years since CO2 was as high as it is now.
Does that make him a zombie?
No you can't. There isn't much carbon in coal ash. It's what's left over after they burn (nearly) all of the carbon out of coal.
Because it was better than not doing anything.
You may be right. It's been a while since I read the story.
One technique I've seen in science fiction is to get an asteroid of the appropriate size and composition, use large mirrors heat it to a molten state with solar energy, blow a large air bubble in the middle of the molten blob then let it cool. That gives you a nice robust outer shell to base your habitat on.
Unobtainium.
Well, not AC anymore and I blew some mod points. Oh well.
Same AC here. That could work. You'd have to include enough power to keep the habitat warm too. Probably the best power source for them would be a nuclear reactor similar to the ones used on spacecraft only bigger. That would last a decade or more. With PV you'd have to have enough batteries to last overnight and through the occasional dust storm.
-1 Offtopic. Although they have things in common a weather model is not a climate model. In fact TFP you refer to complains that some of the computer resources used for climate modeling would be better spent to improve the US's numerical weather modeling.
The basis of this report is work that has been done in occupational studies about how temperature and humidity affect your ability to work. That's pretty easy to control and measure in a lab. The results of those studies that are used by all sorts of employers including the US military to understand how much they can expect of their employees under various conditions. By synthesizing those results with the expected changes due to AGW they came up with an estimate of how it will affect human labor output. I don't see anything dumb about that.
So does hyperthermia (aka heat stroke).
The stuff at Hanford is not bundled up in nice neat easy to store spent fuel rods like at nuclear power plants. Some of these tanks were built over 60 years ago and it's remarkable that they've held up as well as they have.
None of this would have been avoided if Yucca Mountain was open. The stuff in these tanks are not nice neat spent fuel rods like power reactors produce but the nasty leftovers from the Pu-239 extraction process in a liquid slurry form full of all sorts of radioactive isotopes and heavy metals. You can't just load that in a tanker and truck it down to Yucca Mountain. You have to reduce it to a solid form safe (enough) to handle first. The glassification plant they're building is supposed to go on line in 2018 but with the problems they're having I think 2020 or so is more realistic.
The stuff in those tanks is nasty leftovers from the Plutonium-239 extraction process, too nasty for humans to get anywhere near. I think it behooves us to take any leaks seriously. Once a leak starts it can get bigger. Better to try and deal with it before it does.
I doubt there was much development of nuclear power reactors going on at Hanford. It was mainly about producing Plutonium and Uranium for the US nuclear weapons programs. No doubt they learned things that later got applied to power reactors but that wasn't their focus.
Hanford is not just any nuclear plant. There were 9 reactors built there between 1943 and 1963 to produce Plutonium-239 and Uranium-233 for the US nuclear weapons programs. Most of the waste in these tanks is not from the reactors themselves but leftovers from the Pu-239 extraction process, not something power reactors have to deal with. All that's stored at power reactors are spent fuel rods (a problem but not nearly as nasty as the stuff at Hanford).