Carbon Dioxide, Global Warming, and Pollution: What to do, what to do.

I was discussing global climate change with one of my professors, who also happens to be my mentor, at school the other day. He is a Civil Engineer, Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering, specializing in ground water. So I asked him what he thought about climate change and the like not knowing what he would say because he is also a Christian and I wasn't sure what his opinions were. Let me qualify that by saying as you know that many Christians, especially here in the Bible belt are conservatives and conservatives tend not to be on the global warming bandwagon, so I just like to feel around usually before I make an ass of myself.

Somewhat surprisingly, what he told me was extremely similar to my own beliefs on the subject. He said that he tended to be somewhat cynical but was not trying to discredit the science. I was excited.

So we talked about the true pressing problems in the world. We talked about one of the climate reports that said if we don't do something in the next few decades, by 2050 some people were going to be displaced or something. We also compared that to how a billion people in the world have no access to clean water and how two billion have no access to sanitation. We talked about how many million people die each year from diseases related to lack of clean water.

And I have thought about this before, I've even blogged about it in passing, so I decided to blog about it again, but in more detail this time. I want to enumerate the real exigent issues and how they relate not only to our world, politics, people, but also to how I live out my faith through those things.

Let me start by saying that I'm not a "climate change denier" nor do I want to be bellicose toward this issue. I am most certainly not against science, but I think there are a few things not adequately explained by the popular climate change theory, scientifically speaking. I do definitely line up on the side of the issue that says pollution has got to go, it's bad, it's not loving our neighbor as ourselves when we pump the sky full of toxic substances. However, carbon dioxide is not a toxic substance, you inhale a little and exhale a bunch with every breath. Nor do I find it to be the major component of greenhouse gases on this planet. I also feel that the sun causes much of our climate change though I believe man probably has something to do with it. But finally, I don't believe it to be the most pressing issue of our day, and though it may cause rising ocean levels, possibly displacing millions of people, millions of people are already dying because of things that are far easier and cheaper to fix.

Water woes are set to become far more visceral an issue than climate change. The primary thing a culture needs to become great is water. Without water, many people cannot live in tightly packed cities, and without sanitation, disease will run rampant. A civilization cannot thrive unless it has water. So in this age where in America, we flush 1.6 gallons of purified drinking water down the crapper just to wash away a 3 ounce turd and less than 3% of the water purified for supply to our houses actually enters a human body, why are we not focused on providing water to a billion people who don't have it? Why are we so focused on an invisible menace while ignoring a manifest obstacle?

Well, I don't know. Maybe it's sexier. Maybe it's a way to be better than other people. "I have a smaller carbon footprint than you." Maybe people don't really care about other people.

I'd like to think of myself on a lot of issues as a progressive. I think of it this way, I'm not a conservative because I don't think we should go back to something that was better than it is today. I'm a progressive because I think it's never so good that it can't get better tomorrow. I like progressive taxation, conservationism, social justice, and many other progressive ideals. I want things to change, I want them to get better.

For instance, the United States is still about 50% reliant on coal for electrical power. Aside from the issue that coal is about the most carbon intensive form of energy generation, there are a crap ton of other reasons why it's the most horrible of all ways to make power. Look at it from the cradle to the grave. Massive amounts of devastation are wrought to collect the coal at the beginning of the process. Mountaintop removal destroys wild land, mines drool water pollution, and dams that hold tailings from the mines collapse and kill people and ruin watersheds. Most coal is transported to power plants by diesel trains which though quite efficient provide the US with an incredible 10% of its nitrogen oxide pollution. At the plant, the coal is burned, releasing hundreds of tons of toxic metals such as mercury, cadmium and lead which lead to all sorts of diseases from lowered IQ's to full on birth defects and destroying fisheries. Leftovers from the burning include fly ash which gets piled up in heaps which can collapse and make a huge mess as we have recently seen. From Genesis to Revelation, coal power is bad. It's bad for health, for safety, for beauty, for nature and just really really bad.

Despite being a little cynical of the imporance of carbon dioxide in the world, I am most definitely for climate change legislation for the simple reason that it will probably prevent scores of new coal power plants from being built and will hopefully choke off existing ones. With the populist swell against coal that already exists, coal plants are being abandoned left and right. Hopefully, more of the same will happen if Carbon Cap and Trade comes to be.

Also understand that I am an avid reader of Treehugger and Mother Earth News. Both are excellent avenues for finding ways to consume less and for highlighting the real problems with consumption and pollution in the world. They still focus an inordinate amount of time on climate change, but that's their prerogative.

I guess another reason why climate change gets more press is that it's too easy to be against climate change. It's hard to go to a foreign country to provide water purification, but it's easy to be pro-climate. You don't really have to do anything. Its unfortunate, but people will always be lazy, self centered and apathetic. We all know it's so much easier to do nothing rather than something.

If ocean levels rise (they haven't risen much so far, but we'll see, I'm young) yes, millions of people will be displaced. However, as I've mentioned before there are already bigger problems. But people can move. People have the ability to move. 20,000 years ago, ocean levels were 130 meters below where they are today. The earth is constantly in flux. Tides can fluctuate tens of feet every day in some places. Saying that ocean levels can rise is describing the occurrence from an extremely human centered point of view. I'm sure the rise will be quite welcome to brackish water swamp creatures. We can adapt, we will adapt. One day we will run out of coal. Truth be told, all that coal was once free atmospheric carbon dioxide anyway.

What really needs to happen is for us to leverage our resources in such a way to make a sustainable way of living for future generations. People need clean water. People need food. These problems are a trifle in cost compared to the costs of mitigating climate change, but they will be ignored in favor of sexier problems, ones people see on TV and in disaster movies.

I don't care about carbon dioxide. Yet I pursue sustainable living, renewable energy, waterless toilet technology, and the like. Why? Because the pollution, the real pollution that I make travels around the world and causes my brothers and sisters and neighbors to suffer.

That's not loving others like I love myself. That's just loving myself.
WiredForStereo

The Global Warming Debate Continues

We've heard of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, but now there is another global warming docudrama. This one is called The Great Global Warming Swindle. You can view the whole thing on Google Video here. I would recommend that you do.

First, I need to make a single point. Many global warming activists like to say that the debate is over, that we need to stop arguing and do something about the problem. Arguments like this are pure falsehood, and as a person who is dedicated to science (just got two Associate of Science Degrees last Friday,) the debate is NEVER OVER. In science, nothing is ever immutable fact, nothing. Immutable fact comes from religion, not science. Science is study, continual study, always subject to revision on discovery of new information, or falsification of old information. But the debate is never over. It's just not in the nature of science for the debate to be over. That is not the way it works. Ignoring the facts and issues at hand, the debate in science is never over. I'll say it again, there is no end of debate in science, ever. And there is no such thing as a scientific consensus. Science is not up to a vote.

Ok, back to the docudrama. I would like to say that the reason I am calling it a docudrama, and the same reason I call AIT a docudrama is this: both use people, and people are not prone to objectivity. Both are edited, and both are meant to convey a point, not an unbiased reporting of information. Both contain elements of truth, as well as elements of untruth. I have weighed the truth in AIT before, so I'll weigh TGGWS here and now. I have done a little research, and this is my review of the film.

The film makes the point that carbon dioxide levels trail temperature changes by a significant amount to time. I have made this point before, but I my reasons were not as scientifically based as the ones presented in the film. TGGWS states that the reason for this is that the oceans hold tremendous amounts of CO2, and when they warm, they are able to hold less of it and it is released, but this effect is quite a bit delayed because the oceans are enormously large, and warming of them takes hundreds of years. Here's an important point regarding the truth of the film. The expert presented to do most of the backing up for this point has since complained that his view was mischaracterized. He still believes in human caused global warming, and says that as the oceans warm it will only get worse exponentially. This point is well taken, but the science of what he says holds true, and the point that CO2 levels trail temperatures still stands. So the point here is this: The essential tenet of the global warming theory, that CO2 causes global warming, is false. Global warming causes CO2.

I won't go through the entire movie point by point, but I'll explore one more, and that encompasses the nature of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and pollutant. Every oxygen breathing creature on the planet exhales CO2. Every photosynthesizing plant on the planet absorbs CO2. Every living thing on the planet is made of carbon and if allowed to decompose would turn into CO2 among other things. CO2 is a small time greenhouse gas, but CO2 is NOT A POLLUTANT! Pollutants do damage, sulfur, nitrogen, and phosphorus oxides are pollutants that cause acid rain that kills plants, trees, and aquatic life. CO2 on the other hand comes from living things and is absorbed by plants who release oxygen which is breathed by living things which exhale carbon dioxide and the process continues.

Here's an assignment for you. Look up the most potent greenhouse gases. You'll find that water vapor accounts for 36 to 90 percent of the greenhouse effect. Try to outlaw that. You will also find that methane is 17 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2 is, so stop farting.

I believe in living sustainably. I believe in renewable power. I believe in breathing clean air. But the air I breathe only contains 0.05% carbon dioxide, that is until after I breathe it. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it is virtually inert, and the lesser of several greenhouse gases. But here's a thing that environmentalists forget. The rest of the world cannot afford to live carbon neutral. Most of them don't have electricity or running water or access to medical care. And without the industry to create these things, they cannot afford to invest in clean energy. It's a luxury only we in the industrialized world have, and one we should do our best to utilize.

I think there are one of two solutions to this problem. Number one, we allow third world countries to industrialize using their own non renewable reserves and then help them develop renewable energy as quickly as possible ushering in a world technological age where health and comfort abide. Or number two, we build infrastructure for them, relying on their renewable resources alone. And then there's number three, we prevent them from becoming industrialized and continue to force them to live in squalor and poverty, dying of lung cancer from cooking fire smoke, living to the ripe old age of 40. I hate the use of fossil fuels, but what is the option here? People are more important, plus with our support, they can build power plants that have minimal pollution.

Oh, and today when everyone is trying to encourage a one day boycott of gasoline, here's a better idea: buy a Tesla Roadster or a Prius. Those are the ones I recommend.

WiredForStereo

the Humanure Handbook Critique.

Pictured here is the third edition of the Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins. I just finished reading it (not sure which version) online. Check the last post for the link. Click the pic for buying.

As you can see from the date and time on the last post which I posted sometime during the first or second chapter, it has not taken me long. I finished it this morning, and according to one guy, it can be read in 4 hours straight through. I didn't read it straight through, but I'd say it took about that long.

The book's subtitle is "a guide to composting human manure" and I'd say it's that and more. This you might call the real composting guide. Most books about composting or having a section on composting completely skip over the subject of human excrement, and most others look down on it with quite some disdain. Most composters recommend against composting a bunch of things, like kitchen grease, oils, fats, meat, pet poo, and dead animals, but Mr. Jenkins recommends and demonstrates composting all these things. His resulting compost is excellent, and his methods are tried and true for 20 years.

Now a word for you fecophobes. This book will trip you out. If disgusting things bother you, you will be bothered. If you are one of those people who likes to pretend you never crap, this book will mess you up. If you are an active minded person who wants to live sustainably, and believes that therein lies the solution for the future, this book will open your eyes.

The author begins by delineating the problems with today's waste processing systems. And believe me, there are alot of problems, and blindness to those problems. I believe this is beginning to be remedied with recycling programs that teach people that there is no such place as "away" or "out" where you can throw things. But the place that is still missing in people's minds is where "down the drain" ends up. Sure we see a sewage treatment plant now and again, and we catch a whiff o' that smell, but what really goes on there? Turds and stuff get turned into sludge and CO2, that's what.

Now if you are a global warming believer, this should just outrage you, because sewage treatment plants produce millions of tons of CO2, and there's no way you can remediate it. Plus, the sludge that's left over is nasty, with massive amounts of toxins and heavy metals and it just gets to be landfilled. That's no sustainable solution for anyone.

So what is the solution? Recycling our "waste" which is no waste at all. You all know I love composting toilets. Well, Mr. Jenkins takes that concept a bit cheaper and says compost your stuff in your back yard. And you know I love cheaper. He champions (and so do his followers and humanure believers) the concept of sawdust toilets. Basically, it's a 5 gallon bucket with sawdust instead of a toilet bowl. Same as a composting toilet, except you empty the "toilet bowl" when needed onto a properly managed thermophilic (hot) compost pile. Within hours or days, all active pathogens are dead, and the compost is well on it's way to being rich earth for your garden.

The benefits, cheap, easy, cheap, provides compost, cheap, easy, cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeap. The only problem is what Mr. Jenkins calls Fecophobia, the fear of poo. Most people are happy to pay for clean purified drinking water to crap in, flush it down to nowhere using a bunch more purified drinking water and forget it ever existed, and to pay for that service too. They are also happy to pay for food, eat it, then forget about all those wonderful nutrients that could go in their garden to make more food.

So what do we do? Read this book, (free online) and take it to heart except the small Christianity bashing section. Decide if you want to be part of the problem or the solution. If you want to be part of the problem, go ahead and stop there. If you want to be part of the solution, change your life. Don't be like hypocritical global warming hype politicians and celebrities who wont change their lifestyle to match their message *hmmph*algore*HHMHHmph*.

The solution is active care of the planet, not rhetoric; personal responsibility, not politics. The solution is you.

WiredForStereo

Tesla was a Genius.

I was thinking the other day about how there are many off grid homes and other highly efficient homes who use gas for heating and cooking. So, in my ultimate sustainable house, why don't I use gas?

The answer is this. I can't make gas. I can make electricity, but not gas. The same thing goes for why I like electric cars so much, I can make electricity, but not gas.

So, this is the reason why I have not implemented gas appliances in my house design. For ultimate sustainability, you must provide for yourself everything you need on a consistent basis. Additionally, your supply cannot be dependent on a large supply of some resource far away. Unfortunately, that rule can still apply to batteries.

Speaking specifically of natural gas and propane, we have a substance that is a fossil fuel, which by nature has a limited supply, and by limited supply, an increasing price. Also, it must be burned to release energy. Burning uses oxygen, and creates carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon dioxide as well as water. In a nearly sealed house, these things can cause problems. Carbon monoxide is obviously poisonous, nitrogen oxide is the main component of acid rain, carbon dioxide can be an asphyxiate, and water can condensate and cause mold.

Natural gas like other fossil fuels will increase sharply in price in the very near future. Production of oil has already begun to drop, and there will probably be a half hearted switch to natural gas for cars which will increase demand without increasing supply. Who in the last year hasn't had their gas rates raised at least once? One month this last winter, we spent $140 just on gas for a small house. Our electric bill in the heat of summer was never that high. The sorry thing is that I know there are many of you out there who have to pay even more than that.

So what fuels do I feel are worth while? First, electricity is the universal fuel, it powers everything, it can easily be generated in a wide variety of ways, it makes the digital world possible, it can be stored for a limited amount of time, and it can be made to do almost anything. This is why my house is all electric. Yes, it will mean that I will have to have additional generating capacity to make all the kWh's I need, but I will never have to have any fuel tanks filled up at a cost I have absolutely no control of.

Ethanol is second on the list, because it is something that everyone can make who has access to sugar and water. Additionally, you can drink it, and it can be used in car engines with little modification. You can use it as a fuel to distill it, or to heat fermenting tanks.

Third is biodiesel because not everyone has access to the oils or the chemicals necessary to process them into fuel. But as a biofuel it is very clean and useful and can be made in country and to use it in a modern diesel engine requires no modification.

Fourth is biogas. Unless you have a good source of poo, or alot of organic material for biogas digestion, this is gonna be out of your reach. However, there are many sources of poo and other materials and biogas can be refined to utilities grade natural gas to replace or dilute it. It is also a completely natural process which goes on whether we take advantage of it or not. So I say let's. In fact, in China, there are millions of household sized biogas digesters that provide methane for cooking, heating, and light.

And Tesla invented alternating current so that electricity could be used all over the place, that's why he was a genius.

WiredForStereo

I like Global Warming!!!!

Ok, that title was just to get your attention.

There exists a great debate about global warming. Who caused it, what will happen, and what's Al Gore been eating anyway?

I rented "An Inconvenient Truth" with an open mind. As a sustainable living minded person, I thought it would be a good subject to ad to my repertoire. I didn't immediately buy the thing hook line and sinker, but I thought his points were good and I believed the science. I was at the time very interested in the concept of electric cars (still am) and eliminating gunk in the air is the main benefit of that (as well as electricity being much cheaper than gasoline.)

So, I began my research into global warming. I looked at catastrophic weather changes, I looked at glacial melts all over the world, I looked at CO2 and temperature graphs.... wait, there's something interesting. It appeared to me at that time that CO2 levels seemed to follow global warming cycles, not precede them. This made sense to me. When you compost, the hotter the pile is, the faster it rots, creating more carbon dioxide in the process. When the temperature in the world gets hotter, things rot faster, on land and in the water.

Plants like carbon dioxide, it makes them grow faster, it's the fundamental building block of plants and sugars and food. In fact, many commercial greenhouses boost their CO2 levels to about 1000 ppm, four times the atmospheric level to achieve a substantial increase in production.

An additional point is that CH4 methane (found in cow farts and *gasp* natural gas) is a far greater threat as a global warming gas than is carbon dioxide. But plants don't eat methane.

I have said in the past that I don't buy the world ending alarmism that seems to pervade some circles, but I support global warming because it furthers my goals of a sustainable culture powered by locally generated renewable energy. I stand by that today in true political style, I support something I don't believe in because it helps something I do. It's not hypocritical because I openly espouse the truth and the facts in what I am doing.

Aside from global warming, pollution is a huge problem, NOx, POx, SOx, VOC's, heavy metals from mining and coal power plants and ozone depleting chemicals are all still a huge problem. These are the problems our culture needs to focus on. Carbon dioxide is barely a nuisance (and may be considered fertilizer) whilst entire forests are perishing due to acid rain (see Sweden.)

Yes the planet is warming, yes humans are partially to blame, but the planet will go on, it's we humans who need to rearrange ourselves around it, not it around us. It's a perfectly built system, it's a garden of Eden. We can live on this planet without wrecking it, but even in wrecking it, it can still recover and outlive us.

If you really want to help global warming, STOP EATING MEAT, because that's where most of it comes from.

I hope this is a well reasoned explanation, I would love some comments.
WiredForStereo