The environment thread

[Balta1701]

Back in April, the US House passed HR 4089. Purports to help support hunters, fishermen and shooters. In reality, if you read the bill, it completely guts the Wilderness Act. Ugh. Fortunately the Senate buried it in committee, but still, even the threat of something like that passing is enough to make me ill.

 

And why the hell is recreational shooting, in wilderness areas, being championed anyway? Not hunting mind you - just shooting. Why would you want to do that specifically in a wilderness area?

You know the answer to this.

 

Because any restriction on where people can have a gun and use a gun is evil socialism, because guns are *always* good.

 

Take a year and live in a state where they want to put guns on your college campus and force employers to allow people to carry guns onto their property whether they want it or not. That's where this comes from.

[StrangeSox]

As long as our political priorities are set by the people who have the most money.

 

Nothing.

 

The answer is going to be we're going to keep paying $100 billion to repair from the next Katrina, $60 billion to repair from the next Sandy, $100 billion to cover the next dust bowl, and we'll pretend that the people raking in piles of cash off of fossil fuels aren't making that money and leaving the taxpayer with that bill.

Externalities, how do they work?!

[StrangeSox]

You know the answer to this.

 

Because any restriction on where people can have a gun and use a gun is evil socialism, because guns are *always* good.

 

Take a year and live in a state where they want to put guns on your college campus and force employers to allow people to carry guns onto their property whether they want it or not. That's where this comes from.

I honestly see the gun part as secondary in this case.

[BigSqwert]

Climate 101 from Dark Igloo on Vimeo.

[StrangeSox]

Solar Panels For Every Home

 

First, the investor-owned utilities that depend on the existing system for their profits have little economic interest in promoting a technology that empowers customers to generate their own power. Second, state regulatory agencies and local governments impose burdensome permitting and siting requirements that unnecessarily raise installation costs. Today, navigating the regulatory red tape constitutes 25 percent to 30 percent of the total cost of solar installation in the United States, according to data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and, as such, represents a higher percentage of the overall cost than the solar equipment itself.

 

In Germany, where sensible federal rules have fast-tracked and streamlined the permit process, the costs are considerably lower. It can take as little as eight days to license and install a solar system on a house in Germany. In the United States, depending on your state, the average ranges from 120 to 180 days. More than one million Germans have installed solar panels on their roofs, enough to provide close to 50 percent of the nation’s power, even though Germany averages the same amount of sunlight as Alaska. Australia also has a streamlined permitting process and has solar panels on 10 percent of its homes. Solar photovoltaic power would give America the potential to challenge the utility monopolies, democratize energy generation and transform millions of homes and small businesses into energy generators. Rational, market-based rules could turn every American into an energy entrepreneur.

Edited December 13, 2012 by StrangeSox

[NorthSideSox72]

Solar Panels For Every Home

I've said a zillion times before... a distributed system like this makes a ton of sense. I'd love to see that any money going to Alt Energy rebates and deductions and what not, go to the utilities for load balancing transferrance systems, but the money for actual solar cells should be targeted at homeowners and businesses.

 

Whenever my current house reaches a point where we need to re-do the shingles, I'll be looking seriously at solar shingles. Their technology has come a long way, and they actually look like normal roof shingles now. Plus ComEd does net billing too.

 

 

[southsider2k5]

Solar Panels For Every Home

 

What? The government stalls the process? I don't believe that for a second.

[Balta1701]

What? The government stalls the process? I don't believe that for a second.

To protect an entrenched, politically well connected industry that also has a habit of polluting? Never.

[StrangeSox]

yeah that was more the point there

[Jake]

Green folks, can someone tell me what the usual response to the climate change critique that we've only been recording temps since the 1800s? I assume there is one, but for the comfort of my mind I have to know how science accounts for what would otherwise seem like a big hole in the theory.

[Balta1701]

Green folks, can someone tell me what the usual response to the climate change critique that we've only been recording temps since the 1800s? I assume there is one, but for the comfort of my mind I have to know how science accounts for what would otherwise seem like a big hole in the theory.

We have a number of other proxies for temperature. They don't have the small error of a thermometer, but you can combine things together quite well, particularly if you know a bit of geology. There are many ways of measuring it, most of which agree pretty well, but the best are the ice cores.

 

Some particularly fun ones are the records of the Royal Navy. I really like that one in fact, you've got mobile weather records, written down, going back several hundred years, taken at noon, with known equipment, covering the globe. You can reconstruct temperature from water samples, from shells that grew at the time, from plants that grew at the time, from the bodies of people from the time, etc.

 

Thanks to those ice cores recovered from Greenland and Antarctica, we can safely say that we're at the warmest atmosphere in 120,000 years. We can also safely say that we have the highest CO2 content in the atmosphere in >800,000 years, probably >2 million although the data gets a little fuzzy past 800,000 years ago because we lose the ice core record.

 

If we stopped emitting CO2 right now, by the time 2100 rolls around, we'd have the warmest atmosphere in 800,000 years.

 

 

[Jake]

We have a number of other proxies for temperature. They don't have the small error of a thermometer, but you can combine things together quite well, particularly if you know a bit of geology. There are many ways of measuring it, most of which agree pretty well, but the best are the ice cores.

 

Some particularly fun ones are the records of the Royal Navy. I really like that one in fact, you've got mobile weather records, written down, going back several hundred years, taken at noon, with known equipment, covering the globe. You can reconstruct temperature from water samples, from shells that grew at the time, from plants that grew at the time, from the bodies of people from the time, etc.

 

Thanks to those ice cores recovered from Greenland and Antarctica, we can safely say that we're at the warmest atmosphere in 120,000 years. We can also safely say that we have the highest CO2 content in the atmosphere in >800,000 years, probably >2 million although the data gets a little fuzzy past 800,000 years ago because we lose the ice core record.

 

If we stopped emitting CO2 right now, by the time 2100 rolls around, we'd have the warmest atmosphere in 800,000 years.

 

Thanks a ton, that's exactly what I was looking for.

[Balta1701]

Long but worth your time piece really laying out the research on the connection between Pb exposure, primarily from leaded-gasoline, developmental damage in young children, and the crime wave of the 70's-80's. Probably particularly worth thinking about if you own an older house that might still have some residual Pb contamination or if you're moving into an urban area where the contamination built up over time. Also a message worth remembering in terms of how environmentalist movements may have produced substantial economic gains over time and could continue to do so in the future through cleanup of other contaminants like Hg.

[bmags]

Long but worth your time piece really laying out the research on the connection between Pb exposure, primarily from leaded-gasoline, developmental damage in young children, and the crime wave of the 70's-80's. Probably particularly worth thinking about if you own an older house that might still have some residual Pb contamination or if you're moving into an urban area where the contamination built up over time. Also a message worth remembering in terms of how environmentalist movements may have produced substantial economic gains over time and could continue to do so in the future through cleanup of other contaminants like Hg.

 

I was just about to post this. A teeny reminder, but if you are going to be having an urban garden, make sure to import new soil or have a garden bed.

[bmags]

I've read that article like 3 times now. Can't rec it enough.

[Jake]

What does the fiscal cliff debacle say about our chances to avoid the far more worrisome climate cliff?

[BigSqwert]

Too lazy to check if this has already been posted but I just got a chance to read this excellent article from July's Rolling Stone:

 

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Edited January 3, 2013 by BigSqwert

[StrangeSox]

The United States had the warmest year on record last year.

 

Australia had to come up with new colors for its temperature history map

 

 

[BigSqwert]

David Attenborough Calls Humans a "Plague Upon the Earth"

 

Can't say I disagree.

[iamshack]

David Attenborough Calls Humans a "Plague Upon the Earth"

 

Can't say I disagree.

He's absolutely right.

[farmteam]

He's absolutely right.

I agree, but it poses an interesting philosophical sort of question: how can humans be a plague upon Earth, even though we are as a much a part of earth as anything else? A "plague" makes humans sound like extra terrestrials or something.

Edited January 23, 2013 by farmteam

[Reddy]

I agree, but it poses an interesting philosophical sort of question: how can humans be a plague upon Earth, even though we are as a much a part of earth as anything else? A "plague" makes humans sound like extra terrestrials or something.

 

well... plagues are also earth-made typically... unless they're a plague of locusts made by that Jesus guy.

 

but earth typically regulates itself when something like this happens... (see: bubonic plague, ice age, global warming, etc)

[iamshack]

I agree, but it poses an interesting philosophical sort of question: how can humans be a plague upon Earth, even though we are as a much a part of earth as anything else? A "plague" makes humans sound like extra terrestrials or something.

The etymology of the word "plague" is believed to come from the Latin word plāga ("blow, wound") and plangere (“to strike, or to strike down”), cf. German Plage (“infestation”).

 

[farmteam]

well... plagues are also earth-made typically... unless they're a plague of locusts made by that Jesus guy.

 

but earth typically regulates itself when something like this happens... (see: bubonic plague, ice age, global warming, etc)

That's true; some poor phrasing on my part. What I meant was, plagues are not common/natural to the environment they're in...other wise they wouldn't be a plague. At least in my head that's what plague means, anyway.

 

...

 

The more I think about this, the more I agree you and shack's infestation point. Humans really are multiplying, to the point the Earth won't be able to sustain us. Sounds like a plague!

[Y2HH]

While I feel saying things like this can sound profound, it's my belief that this ignores the fact that Mother Nature wanted this. If she didn't, we wouldn't be here. And when she tires of us...we won't be.