texas delenda est
Tag: climate
Japanese Say No to Cars
car sales in Japan are down 31% since the peak in 1990, and not only because of stagnant population growth. The newest generation of would-be buyers, just doesn’t think cars are all that necessary
sales down 31%. excellent!
Rain-making Bacteria
the most active ice nuclei are biological in origin. This is important because the formation of ice in clouds is required for snow and most rainfall.
90% CO2 reduction required
I’m increasingly hearing science-based realism described as a 90% reduction in the US climate footprint by 2030, partnered with massive effort to diffuse the resulting innovations around the globe.
Power Plant CO2 Monitoring
CO2 Monitoring for Action is a massive database containing information on the CO2 emissions of 50k power plants and 4k power companies worldwide. Power generation accounts for 40% of all CO2 emissions in the United States and 25% of global emissions. CARMA is the first global inventory of a major, emissions-producing sector of the economy.
Engineering Grand Challenges
All of these examples merely scratch the surface of the challenges that engineers will face in the 21st century. The problems described here merely illustrate the magnitude and complexity of the tasks that must be mastered to ensure the sustainability of civilization and the health of its citizens, while reducing individual and societal vulnerabilities and enhancing the joy of living in the modern world.
now, how to create a manhattan project level enthusiasm.
Against Ethanol
Gasoline alternatives will boost CO2 levels and aggravate global warming.
Of course. fucking corn mafia
The prices mainly reflect changes in demand—not problems of supply, such as harvest failure. The changes include the gentle upward pressure from people in China and India eating more grain and meat as they grow rich and the sudden, voracious appetites of western biofuels programmes, which convert cereals into fuel. This year the share of the maize (corn) crop going into ethanol in America has risen and the European Union is implementing its own biofuels targets. To make matters worse, more febrile behavior seems to be influencing markets: export quotas by large grain producers, rumours of panic-buying by grain importers, money from hedge funds looking for new markets.
I can’t believe Obama is believing the ethanol nonsense.
“fuel-efficient cars and alternative fuels like E85, a fuel formulated with 85% ethanol, represent the future of the auto industry. It is a future American car companies can attain if we start making some tough choices now.”
The average Iowa farm has the potential to feed 3500 people per km2. But planted with nothing but corn — and with almost all of that corn going to ethanol production and the feeding of animals — the same land can only feed 744 people per km2.
On all the ethanol and similar nonsense.
The biomass industry—selling ground-up tree pellets to European power plants—is an economic boon to the South, but experts worry its growth is terrible for the planet. Will the Biden administration decide it’s climate-friendly?
Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%
Subsidies kill.
2022-03-06:
But whatever the (slim-to-none) merits of that argument in 2007, its merits are 0 in 2022, when the United States has become the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. And though ethanol may have some small environmental advantages over gasoline, those arguable benefits are nullified by ethanol’s terrible toll on world food output.
It may take some time and government assistance to rotate US farmland back from corn-for-fuel to food crops. But unfortunately, the war in Ukraine may last for a long time. If food-importing nations in Asia and the Middle East could be assured that more American wheat, barley, and sunflower oil would be heading their way in 2023, and that more corn would be available for animal feed rather than burned up as automobile fuel, wiser US farm policy could even help consolidate global support for Ukraine.
Ending the ethanol mandates and subsidies will boost world food supply. More food supply will reduce price pressures. Less pressure on food prices will remove a Russian weapon of intimidation.
Hydrate Hypothesis
400B tons of methane in permafrost hydrate will gradually melt, leading to runaway processes, and turning agricultural areas into dust. Over 4.5B people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012
Coal Plant Deathwatch
of course this hardly matters as long as china and india are addicted to coal
Replacing Business Travel
Widespread teleconferencing could bring 10% of all flights to a halt
eh? try 50-70%. all those useless sales drones flying around add up.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 