I guess I'm just being extremely unclear today, because we are in agreement. The OP was asking whether plant material, upon its decay, releases the same amount of CO2 as it absorbed while it was growing. To this I answer "Yes," because if it were not the case, we would find ourselves surrounded by carbon deposits. Hence, carbon flows in a cycle between atmosphere and biosphere.
I was in no sense implying that we're hurting anything by breathing out CO2.
And vice versa: Every Python programmer should switch to Perl.
At least, for a month or so.
Knowing multiple languages increases your value as a programmer quadratically. I like to think that languages follow a square law. By doubling the number of languages you know, you quadruple your total skill and marketability as a programmer.
I've done significant stuff in both languages and there are definitely tasks where Python is better -- for example, command-and-control, super-high-level types of apps, which coordinate large systems of smaller programs. And Perl is vastly superior in other situations, such as processing enormous wads of data and formatting output. I've even written hybrid programs where Python and Perl code intertwine.
Step outside your box. You don't have to love the language you're learning, but consider it an investment in yourself. Saving money sucks too, but it's still a good idea.
Jesus, what's the big deal with a guy making a buck? It's on topic, and it doesn't cost you anything.
If he really wanted to be an ass, he could have hidden it behind a meta redirect. But he didn't. If you want to be all morally hoity-toity about it, that's your prerogative.
Here's why shipping material off-planet is a really, really bad idea.
1. It costs a fuckload of money.
2. It removes material from the earth, thus depleting our resources. We literally have less than we did before. And what do we have less of? Carbon. The stuff of life.
3. It reduces the mass of Earth. This would change the moon's orbit, among other things. (Starting the greenhouse effect on Mars? We're talking significant amounts of CO2 here!)
4. The fuel burned by the rockets while lifting off would probably put more pollution into the atmosphere than you removed by shooting it into space in the first place.
Each pin of a dot matrix printer has its own imperfections. Just because you can't see them without a magnifying glass doesn't mean they aren't there.
In fact, a dot matrix seems like it would be easier to identify, since it is more closely related to an actual typewritter than, say, an inkjet printer. And techniques for analyzing typewriter evidence are already well established.
Well, they already do this kind of analysis with typewriters, and to my knowledge nobody has ever been falsely convicted based solely on typewriter evidence. I hardly think it will be any worse a problem just because the particular device is a printer, not a typewriter.
Typewriter/printer evidence is just one piece of evidence in the case against a suspect. You aren't going to get convected of a crime based solely on that piece of evidence, especially when you can easily show that you purchased the printer second-hand.
The obvious answer is to get used to the fact that our energy requirements have impacts on our environment, and choose the energy sources which have the lowest objective impacts.
If we can reduce our energy requirements, that's even better.
But pointing out that our actions affect the environment is a waste of time. Your point is?
Anybody who's actually used a siphon knows that it stops working once the end of the hose is at a higher level than the fluid in the tank. This won't work.
Actually 99% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from volcanic action...
Yes, but carbon is also consumed through geologic action. Carbonate deposits on the ocean floor get subducted underneath tectonic plates. This removes the carbon from the surface carbon cycle for millions of years.
The rate of CO2 release and the rate of subduction back into the earth are very similar. If this were not the case, CO2 would have been steadily increasing for billions of years. We don't see evidence of this.
Nobody wants to fill the atmosphere with CO2, but at least some of it gets converted back to oxygen by plants. Won't we eventually have an oxygen shortage when too much oxygen has been used in the ZEPP combustion process and is now stored underground in the form of liquid CO2?
No, because the oxygen comes from the biosphere (plants). If we reduce atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels, the plants in the biosphere (primarily in the ocean) will quickly replace the lost oxygen through photosynthesis.
The only way your scenario could occur is if we took way more CO2 out of the atmosphere than we ever put in -- this would upset the carbon balance in the biosphere, and because not enough carbon is available this would lead to a mass die-off, and a reduction in the rate of photosynthesis. Remember that life is made of carbon.
If for some ridiculous reason they planned to go ahead with this, a more realistic solution for the CO2 waste product would be to run the gas produced by the evaporating liquid CO2 through another turbine
Whuuuh??
It takes more energy to turn the CO2 into a liquid than you could possibly ever extract by allowing it to evaporate and spin a turbine. Not only that, you are now left with CO2 gas again.
In other words, this idea is even worse than simply venting the CO2 straight into the atmosphere.
Well this would be a problem if humans produced any real quantity of co2....the thing is 300 gigtons of co2 is produced a year from natural causes and humans only produce 6 gigtons
NO. 300 gigatons of CO2 cycle through the environment every year. In a closed cycle.
But every year, humans add an extra 6 gigatons to that cycle that was not there the previous year. We do this by taking carbon from deep underground (in the form of oil) and burning it to release that CO2 to the atmosphere.
Natural processes do not change the global CO2 balance, at least not on the short time scales that humans are capable of changing it.
Let's not store that CO2, let's use it to hyper-carbonize plants in special greenhouses. We can then compost those plants to create the methane gas we need to run the darn things.
Of course, we could just wake up from our dream states and realize that there is NO zero-effect way to create energy.
What's wrong with the plant-growing idea you just had? Perhaps you were joking, but it's actually perfectly reasonable.
What if we could genetically engineer an algae so that it reproduced and consumed CO2 from the atmosphere as fast as it possibly could? Then we could dry the algae and burn it for fuel, somewhat like peat moss. Or convert it into methane, as you said.
The trick is finding an organism that we can coax into growing at an extremely fast rate.
Lets freeze the carbon dioxide blanketing the earth, and store it underground! Genius!
Considering it started out underground in the form of oil, and we took it out and dumped it into the atmosphere, it only seems appropriate, doesn't it?
Uh, it was "sequestered underground" in the first place. Where do you think the fossil fuel came from?
If those chambers are capable of holding oil and natural gas for millions of years, they are certainly capable of holding CO2 as well.
In fact, newer drilling operations often inject CO2 into the well in order to pressurize the chamber and assist in extracting the last drops of oil from a dried out oil chamber.
The idea of storing CO2 underground might sound crazy to you, but that's only because you've never done any serious research into the problem of carbon sequestration.
I'm not certain that this is the best possible solution -- I think we need to be looking at nuclear fuels instead of better ways to control CO2 emissions from petroleum -- but it's not crazy.
I know that the United States is supposed to be the wild West and the rest of the world more civilized, but an American it freaks me out whenever I'm in another country and see policemen carrying machine guns (so far, in France and Austria).
Heh. Try Israel. Not only machine guns, but grenade launchers, tear gas launchers and big, scary-ass knives. Whoa.
the increased bandwidth and throughput from regular spoken or written word would be phenomenal.
The difficulty in keeping secrets or private thoughts would also be phenomenal. Imagine you're neuro-chatting with your girlfriend, and she asks "Does my new skirt make my ass look fat?" Immediately your brain thinks "Why, yes" and this is transmitted to your girlfriend before you can self-censor your thoughts.
I would never "plug in" to such a device because I don't have the mental control to avoid thinking about things which I want to keep secret. And I doubt many other people do, either.
Silly example of a very big problem. No, this is a really, really bad idea.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the same situation with MPAA ratings -- not legally imposed, but if they weren't there, the government would legally impose them.
Basically, "We must self-regulate, lest the government force regulation upon us."
I was in no sense implying that we're hurting anything by breathing out CO2.
At least, for a month or so.
Knowing multiple languages increases your value as a programmer quadratically. I like to think that languages follow a square law. By doubling the number of languages you know, you quadruple your total skill and marketability as a programmer.
I've done significant stuff in both languages and there are definitely tasks where Python is better -- for example, command-and-control, super-high-level types of apps, which coordinate large systems of smaller programs. And Perl is vastly superior in other situations, such as processing enormous wads of data and formatting output. I've even written hybrid programs where Python and Perl code intertwine.
Step outside your box. You don't have to love the language you're learning, but consider it an investment in yourself. Saving money sucks too, but it's still a good idea.
If he really wanted to be an ass, he could have hidden it behind a meta redirect. But he didn't. If you want to be all morally hoity-toity about it, that's your prerogative.
Oh and by the way, I can smell your patchouli.
1. It costs a fuckload of money.
2. It removes material from the earth, thus depleting our resources. We literally have less than we did before. And what do we have less of? Carbon. The stuff of life.
3. It reduces the mass of Earth. This would change the moon's orbit, among other things. (Starting the greenhouse effect on Mars? We're talking significant amounts of CO2 here!)
4. The fuel burned by the rockets while lifting off would probably put more pollution into the atmosphere than you removed by shooting it into space in the first place.
I produce intestinal gas after lunch, but I certainly don't fucking EMIT it (well, not until I get home, anyway).
In fact, a dot matrix seems like it would be easier to identify, since it is more closely related to an actual typewritter than, say, an inkjet printer. And techniques for analyzing typewriter evidence are already well established.
Why not just bang the thing out in cuneiform on a stone tablet? That sounds about as convenient as this plan...
Typewriter/printer evidence is just one piece of evidence in the case against a suspect. You aren't going to get convected of a crime based solely on that piece of evidence, especially when you can easily show that you purchased the printer second-hand.
I don't think there's any problem here.
It implies nothing of the sort. I was pointing out that plant matter is not a good vehicle for carbon sequestration, nothing more.
If we can reduce our energy requirements, that's even better.
But pointing out that our actions affect the environment is a waste of time. Your point is?
Anybody who's actually used a siphon knows that it stops working once the end of the hose is at a higher level than the fluid in the tank. This won't work.
Yes, so if you eat the sugar, whatever it was you would have otherwise eaten will either decay or be eaten by someone else, ending up as CO2 again.
And after it's eaten, it's metabolized and then breathed out as CO2. Try thinking beyond step 1.
Yes, but carbon is also consumed through geologic action. Carbonate deposits on the ocean floor get subducted underneath tectonic plates. This removes the carbon from the surface carbon cycle for millions of years.
The rate of CO2 release and the rate of subduction back into the earth are very similar. If this were not the case, CO2 would have been steadily increasing for billions of years. We don't see evidence of this.
No, because the oxygen comes from the biosphere (plants). If we reduce atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels, the plants in the biosphere (primarily in the ocean) will quickly replace the lost oxygen through photosynthesis.
The only way your scenario could occur is if we took way more CO2 out of the atmosphere than we ever put in -- this would upset the carbon balance in the biosphere, and because not enough carbon is available this would lead to a mass die-off, and a reduction in the rate of photosynthesis. Remember that life is made of carbon.
No, the carbon cycle in the biosphere is closed. What comes in goes out. If this were not the case, we'd be standing on mile-thick carbon deposits.
Whuuuh??
It takes more energy to turn the CO2 into a liquid than you could possibly ever extract by allowing it to evaporate and spin a turbine. Not only that, you are now left with CO2 gas again.
In other words, this idea is even worse than simply venting the CO2 straight into the atmosphere.
NO. 300 gigatons of CO2 cycle through the environment every year. In a closed cycle.
But every year, humans add an extra 6 gigatons to that cycle that was not there the previous year. We do this by taking carbon from deep underground (in the form of oil) and burning it to release that CO2 to the atmosphere.
Natural processes do not change the global CO2 balance, at least not on the short time scales that humans are capable of changing it.
Of course, we could just wake up from our dream states and realize that there is NO zero-effect way to create energy.
What's wrong with the plant-growing idea you just had? Perhaps you were joking, but it's actually perfectly reasonable.
What if we could genetically engineer an algae so that it reproduced and consumed CO2 from the atmosphere as fast as it possibly could? Then we could dry the algae and burn it for fuel, somewhat like peat moss. Or convert it into methane, as you said.
The trick is finding an organism that we can coax into growing at an extremely fast rate.
Considering it started out underground in the form of oil, and we took it out and dumped it into the atmosphere, it only seems appropriate, doesn't it?
If those chambers are capable of holding oil and natural gas for millions of years, they are certainly capable of holding CO2 as well.
In fact, newer drilling operations often inject CO2 into the well in order to pressurize the chamber and assist in extracting the last drops of oil from a dried out oil chamber.
The idea of storing CO2 underground might sound crazy to you, but that's only because you've never done any serious research into the problem of carbon sequestration.
I'm not certain that this is the best possible solution -- I think we need to be looking at nuclear fuels instead of better ways to control CO2 emissions from petroleum -- but it's not crazy.
Heh. Try Israel. Not only machine guns, but grenade launchers, tear gas launchers and big, scary-ass knives. Whoa.
The difficulty in keeping secrets or private thoughts would also be phenomenal. Imagine you're neuro-chatting with your girlfriend, and she asks "Does my new skirt make my ass look fat?" Immediately your brain thinks "Why, yes" and this is transmitted to your girlfriend before you can self-censor your thoughts.
I would never "plug in" to such a device because I don't have the mental control to avoid thinking about things which I want to keep secret. And I doubt many other people do, either.
Silly example of a very big problem. No, this is a really, really bad idea.
Exactly! All that information on the Internet reproduces sexually.