DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus The world is still burning

Why would that matter?

He needs a baseline for ridicule purposes.

yeah that’s a good reason to roll back gov’t regulations and to continue polluting our air, water, earth. Pffft trump supporters.

I wasn't being snarky or attacking you. It matters because people of my age and older can attest to how much worse things were back in the 50s, 60s, and even 70s. I was just wondering if you were around back then?

Amen!

Do you mean that factories and chimneys were much worse back then - spewing out heavy smoke & pollution? I don't want to assume but that's the way I read it.

I think that numbers and mass production would be the biggest factor - though I don't claim to be an expert. Just look at the number of vehicles on the road - 1960 there were 61 million cars. Today there are 287 million. Each one producing an average of about 4.6 tons of carbon monoxide each year. And that's with today's EPA regulations and lower emissions.

While I can see why things might be perceived one way as we think back to tall chimneys spewing black noxious gas into the skies - looking at the data and exactly how much pollution we are producing would be more accurate and take the 'perception' out of the debate.

Yeah - the regulations imposed in the 70s were really excellent ideas - weren't they?

If only we could do the same thing for C02 -- given that the amount of C02 released every year is still going up drastically (worldwide, and holding constant in the United states). This is unlike PM2.5 particles, aerosols and CFCs, which have all gone down.

Never mind. I was trying to have a "conversation." You seemingly want to have an "argument."

Carry on...

Ah yes - a "conversation" where you use your "wisdom" to teach young people the undeniable truths that can only be gained, not by looking any of the evidence, but by remembering how things used to be.

Like I've mentioned previously, I know a lot about this topic -- don't pull some condescending "young people don't understand the way things used to be" crap." -- Or if you do pull it, maybe try and back it up?

I believe we're talking about two separate issues. Yes, we did clean up our waterways to some extent. And those who went above and beyond federal regulations, like Los Angeles also cleaned up their smog issues.

But just look around at what that got them. They get called tree huggers and are labeled negatively for doing the right thing. Also, that's what is close to the earth that we can see with our own two eyes. It doesn't account for the atmosphere above it. Air is something we all know exits even though we can't see it. We know because of the impact it has on humans. People die when they can't breathe in air.

Many of us have faith in God even though we can't see him. Human beings don't seem to have much of a feeling of need to take precautions for something they do not see as some immediate threat. They ignore the "an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure" saying we're all taught growing up.

Much like air, global warming is proven. The fact the carbon we put into the atmosphere is a big contribution has been proven. And the thing is, once it's too late to change, no measures can correct it.

It's a simple matter of understanding that in some ways we have cleaned up our planet. But it was only the things we could see. Smog over L.A. Rivers burning. It's the thing we can't see that is the biggest threat. And that threat is being ignored.

I know you'll find this part political, but hey, this is the political forum. But it is a prime example of the point I'm trying to make.

Some people understood that a pandemic was inevitable. Ever since the days of Bush preparations were made for such an event. An expert panel was appointed. A playbook for such an event was produced. Yet not only was it ignored, but the playbook was trashed and the panel was disbanded.

Then we were told, "“nobody could have predicted this".

That's exactly what's happening here.

I don't think we are talking about two separate issues. I do think that my point is being misinterpreted. I asked the dude a question and he got snarky. Whatever...I'm not feeling well enough to argue.

For those of us who were alive in the '60s, we remember that our waters were severely polluted. People were not even allowed to enter Lake Erie. Raw, toxic sewage was being dumped into our rivers, lakes, creeks, streams, oceans etc. The color of the sky was orange in black in almost every city that was part of the Steel Belt. There were 2-4 inches of black soot on window ledges, roofs, and other structures. The air stunk to high heaven. While there are more cars now, the fuel being burned was worse for the atmosphere. Forests were being raped. Strip mines were everywhere in certain parts of the country. People used to burn their garbage in large metal drums in their back yards.

With that said, I consider myself an environmentalist and have supported that movement even to this day. I was just trying to add some levity to the conversation.

Studies have been done by both sides and we hear conflicting reports. It depends on who is "funding" the research.

I know three things. Environmental laws and practices are better now than they were in the 1960s. The air is and water is in better shape now than it was then. And finally, we still are doing too much to pollute the earth. One of my biggest concerns is how we are invading forests/jungles and displacing the wildlife that inhabited those areas. They have to go somewhere and that is usually around people. Thus, we will continue to see an escalation in the number of viruses [that are similar to Covid-19] unleashed on mankind. And the worst part is that we are the greedy idiots who are providing the conditions to cause pandemics that can wipe out our own species.

Limbaugh says, 10 million in California are having rolling black outs-
I heard about that yesterday, power goes off for 1 hour, for everybody and it rolls around to the next group,

Limbaugh says, it's in part to California going away from foss-- Natural gas sources specifically, and going with solar and wind energy.

So, another one for the conservative right!

You can't put a windmill on the front of a tank.

(now let's see how the left spins this to be the opposite, )
Not funny to Californians though!

I think the reply nailed the issue - carbon dioxide emissions. Couple that with deforestation ... you have a bad combo. Climate change isn't about how polluted our rivers and waterways are.

30 years ago my environmental studies teacher railed against an area the size of the country of Wales being cut down every year from the Amazon rain-forests ... and it hasn't slowed down. Interesting article here for any that care to read it:

"The world’s tropical forests are shrinking at a staggering rate, the equivalent of 30 football pitches per minute. "

Limbaugh is great at framing the argument... no doubt the truth is not as black and white as he framed it but hey ho. It's not like he gets paid by big oil or anything right.

This is true. As Lyuokdea would say, I know a lot about this topic.

It's not that switching from fossil fuels to renewable generation is a bad idea, it's the political pressure to retire fossil fuels so quickly before a plan of replacing them with renewables could really be hashed out. Additionally, storing renewable energy is still in its infancy and renewables themselves, due to their intermittent nature, need fossil fuels to back them up.

It's not just California that is suffering from this heat wave, it's the entire western US. The record heat wave plus the scarcity of generation in the western US has many western states in a bind currently.

I actually agree with a lot of what you say. I would suggest you take a look at all of the regulations that have been repealed over the past four years and let me know the direction you feel we are headed in now.

The only place we really disagree is that part where I mentioned, "the things you can't see" in my previous post.

FWIW: I wasn't even trying to argue when I asked that one guy how old he was. I was just curious if he was alive during that time.

The entire thing is complex.

Think about it. While I support the environmental movement, we have to also look at the economy and the quality of life of our people. I mentioned the Steel Belt earlier. It is now called the Rust Belt and so many folks who were once gainfully employed fell on hard times.

I don't pretend to have the correct answers, but I think there has to be some sort of balance.

so anyways,

hopefully the Biden/harris reverses the trash ass decision by the trump administration to allow drilling in the alaska refuge.

then they need to clean up the EPA ASAP. the trump administration is an infection that needs to be cleansed all over the country, so this will be a monumental task i hope the biden team is up for.

I didn't mention you asking him his age. That's between you and whoever commented on that aspect.

I would suggest you may wish to consider that many of those plants that are now shut down, leading it to now be called the rust belt, may have direct connection with why the air stunk to high heaven and had a different color to it. As to why the suit was building up on the window seals and roofs.

It's a terrible thing that all of the jobs that were once here are now gone. Yet millions of new jobs would be created if we actually focused on changing over to renewable energy. We could once again have those jobs without the stink and suit.

What's up with the thing making rounds on social media about Trump wanting to open the grand canyon for uranium mining? Any truth to that? I never clicked through to a story, just saw it and shook my head.

EDIT: Just found this:

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/...ing/3087095001/

I don't doubt that the switch to less reliable power-sources (wind/solar) - has led to some of the issues with rolling blackouts.

But rolling blackouts in the middle of the summer aren't exactly new to California either. Remember the rolling blackouts of the early 2000s?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

Part of the issue (which, I agree, is going to be exacerbated by solar and wind power) - is that companies never want there to be too much power, because that is just a loss for them -- back in 2017 electricity in parts of California and Texas was free (or below free) - because there were very windy/sunny not-hot days:

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-solar/

I think there are a couple ways to move forward:

1.) I'm a huge proponent of nuclear power. This is an area where grassroots organizations have really missed the boat (even causing physicists like Merkel to stop expanding nuclear power). Nuclear is clean, reliable - very safe -- and while the nuclear waste storage issue is real, the effect is overstated.

2.) We need government money to build methods for regulating solar/wind grids. Technologies like Molten Salt Wind plants are somewhat less effective in power/$, which is why corporations build them less frequently -- but they are very reliable 24/7 power plants. You could even build a plant to pump water up a hill when there is too much power, and let it run back down when there is too little. Distribution technologies like this don't make a lot of money, but they are important for the transition to a low-carbon future.

**Note: Obviously, the game changer would be cheap battery storage -- and we should fund R&D there -- but there are guaranteed technologies that already exist which could store solar/wind power.**

3.) Carbon Taxes. Praise the free market and start setting a tax on carbon emissions that can be bought and sold - raising the price of the tax, by say 10%/year. Companies like Tesla have already done wonderful things for electric vehicles -- and we can give them a huge advantage with small changes to tax law.

Absolutely agree - and I really feel for people in coal mining towns (my grandparents and others included) - who got left out to dry when the mines closed and the money went away.

We could build the largest solar plants in the world there -- build jobs, produce income, send the power to DC and NYC.

Solar Power = Jobs, there is a lot more work in building solar plants than in maintaining coal/natural gas plants. It would be a boon for workers.

It's not necessarily the switch to those resources that has led to some of the issues. The switch is still happening. Fossil fuel plants are being retired at a greater rate than they are being replaced by renewable resources. Much of this is due to political pressure to be green. The plans to do this switchover needed more time to be thought through.



We are not just talking about California currently. The entire western US is up against it.



That's just called business. It's a balancing act. If you overbuild the system or over invest there's a chance you won't get a return on your investment if it's not used. That's not what we are seeing right now. See my earlier point about fossil fuel retirements.

From the figures I've seen we're still giving oil and gas somewhere between 14 and 20 billion a year in subsidies. I don't see why anyone would advocate continuing to subsidize the past rather than being investing in the obvious future. I mean if we're talking about return on investment moving forward.

Good point - I just meant that there are a lot of factors at play.



Yes - but that is the role of government. The most economical solution might be to have 1 week of rolling blackouts per year.

Similarly, the most economical way to run a hospital might be to cut some corners and have 1% of patients die.

I agree with you that this has been mismanaged -- and we have come up with some "worst world" scenario where we shut down coal plants to early, but also don't set up the right green technologies that can actually handle the load.

I don't believe that the technologies don't already exist. It just would take a real investment to implement them.

They exist and are being built, but it takes time. Much of the western US is committed to going green and many renewable projects are in the works.

That will take care of at least getting back some capacity on the system lost due to fossil fuel retirements. How to back up the capacity when a cloud comes or the wind stops blowing will be another big concern once all of it is up and running. That's kind of a second layer to this.

I am all for reliable alternatives. The problem is we don't have them.

Nuclear is the most reliable, but people don't want that. I think the last Nuke plant commissioned was TVA'a Watt's Bar about 50 miles up the lake from me. Might have been early 80's.

Wind, forget wind. It might supplement, but you aren't going to power a city with a few windmills.

Solar holds some possibilities, but at this point is just isn't there. Then you have to be able to store it, and face it, you have places that just don't get all that much sun. It may have more potential in Florida and Arizona, less in Washington and northern Ohio. Some places are cloudy 60% of the time.

We have a lot of hydro here in the Tennessee Valley. There are a series of dams. I live on the lake a mile up from Chickamauga Dam. Wonderful structure, but not enough to power the area. Then you have to flood vast areas to have enough water stored to power 6 turbines.. Raccoon Mtn,. just west of town. The largest man made lake in the world that isn't damed.

At night they pump water up in to the lake. When TVA needs power during peak, they release it down tubes to feed the power house at the base of the mountain..before 911 you could tour the place, it was like something from a James Bond movie....pretty impressive. Got to say, I live a pretty great place in this country.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=rac...l&FORM=VIRE

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=chi...l&FORM=VIRE

I start my morning 5 miles walks at the base of the dam.

Sorry, I don't think you forget about wind power. We aren't trying to replace fossil fuels with one thing. It's not a straight swap ... it's a blend of things. Wind will be part of the solution - large or small it's part of the solution. As has been mentioned here and many times before, storing the energy (efficiently) is a large part of the challenge right now.

People always say that -- but the effect is not near as large as people think.




Germany is producing 9% of it's total power via solar (compared to the US at 1.2%). This is despite the fact that Germany gets significantly less sunshine than Ohio.

Cool I always heated wearing a stinking suit.

Another thing that amazes me is people have the mind set of information they got ten or fifteen years ago regarding solar and wind. Since that time so many improvements have been made that they are both far more efficient and cost effective than they were then. Even the cost of solar has been greatly reduced.

Solar Technology Got Cheaper and Better in the 2010s. Now What?

No other power-generation technology matched solar’s pace of cost reduction this past decade. The game will change again in the 2020s.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/...-2010s-now-what

I don't think we're disagreeing here. I don't believe that green energy is at the stage where it can take over for fossil fuels. What I do believe is that we are at the point that we could be using a lot more green energy and a lot less fossil fuels.

And yes, I've studied the TVA. A time in history where a Democratic president brought electricity, business and jobs to the south in the worst of times. A simple thank you to him will do quite nicely. Heck, if not for that the south may still be using kerosene lamps and outhouses.

I have an aunt in Kentucky who hates when I bring that up.

Ok Boomer. We’ll take it from here.

j/c

There are alternative energy source, more specifically, solar and wind. But both have drawbacks other than the lack of wind or sun.

Solar, takes a lot of open land with good exposure to be efficient. Considerably more land for the same amount of power to fossil fuels. It takes like 3-4 acres to generate 1 megawatt of power. It think a typical plant is around 500MW, so we are talking 1500-2000 acres.

A wind turbine produces around 1.5MW,with a typical wind farm using just over 1 acre per turbine, or roughly 3/4 acre per MW. Roughly 375 acres for 500MW.

The average fossil fuel power plant uses like 300 acres. SO close to wind.

And we currently have no viable option for storing this power for low production days/nights, so we still need an alternate form of production for those times.

Then factor in that wind turbines are tall and large, and many people/communities will fight to not have to look at them out their back doors. They all want cheap renewable power, but only if it's not in their back yard.

And we won't even get into the bird issue.

If I was a power company in the south, looking at the future, I would start leasing solar panels to residents, and include battery storage. A steady constant stream of revenue from leasing, while usually providing a surplus to feed back to the grid.

If my power company told me I could lease a solar system from them for $150ish a month, I'd take it in a heartbeat.

I have a wind turbine about 400 yards from my house. No, it's not mine. I don't recall its capacity, but it's been there for 10+ years. It still hasn't paid for itself, let alone saved anyone any money, with the breakdowns, the tri annual "routine maintenance" etc.

But it's cool. About half of it was paid for with tax rebates. I don't mind one bit sitting on my covered patio, drinking coffee, a beer, doing a crossword, whatever, and watching it. In fact, I rather enjoy it at times.

Something that could potentially go a long, long way toward helping alternate energy sources gain more widespread adoption would be the development of devices that readily run on 24v DC or 48v DC and the subsequent start of separate wiring in homes for these voltages.

If TV's, computers, gaming systems, small appliances, etc... had these abilities - and more specifically, if they ran natively on DC but had built-in inverters to allow for AC usage, and if houses began to be wired with alternate outlets for 24/48v DC, then the in-home battery systems would be even more effective and efficient as you could skip past the lossy conversion to AC.

It would be a great thing to get a bunch of industries together to begin a multi-pronged effort to bring this to market.

AC power rules because of its ability to easily and readily transfer great distances, but for in-house use, especially when using stored energy, you can't beat DC.

AC could still be used to supply power to a home and charge batteries when the sun is down or the wind isn't blowing, but the in-home usage could be homogeneous and remove the need to further involve inverters and energy loss.

Personally, as someone who plans to build his retirement homestead in the coming years, and as someone who plans to leverage plenty of solar and wind in that construction, I would find this invaluable.

Lighting a home with LEDs using DC is a no-brainer if you use in-ceiling lights, and incredibly simple right now. There is little reason at all to run a table lamp on 110v when the bulb in that lamp is likely to be an LED buld these days. Extending the ability to natively power additional things simply isn't possible right now; we need industry to begin supplying alternate versions of products.... and, usually, that would be as simple as using different motors and different power supplies. With modular construction methods, this should be easy and affordable for manufacturers to offer.

I wish we would just agree to build smaller thorium reactors to bridge the technology. I'd be 100% for that.



I mean do the R&D to make it as safe as possible and go! There is a lot of info on it out there and we could do it fairly fast and affordably. I wouldn't even mind conventional nuclear power as a bridge. Yes it comes, with waste issues but I don't think it will kill the planet.

There's a lot of power-saving that could be done, but industry will never let it happen.

I once had a conversation with Stephen Chu (former head of DOE), where he relayed a media story about a "Major Initiative" where the DOE worked with the cable companies to reduce the Standby Power Consumption of DVRs and home cable equipment by ~20%.

And he talked about how frustrated he was by that - because they could have decreased the standby power by more than 90% -- but that would prohibit the DVR from live-updating the channel guide in the background, and companies thought consumers wouldn't like it. The DOE came back with a plan to have the device cycle between "Standby" and "Deep Standby" where the channels update every 15 minutes or so -- and industry wouldn't go for that either because it would require another microchip at a cost of $5 or so a pop.



To get back to your point - I agree that this could be really nice (because AC/DC converters are expensive in individual households). But that is a real cost on devices, and industry will never go for it (which is a bit silly - since computers convert everything back to DC anyway...)

Which was exactly half the point.
Aside from lighting, the primary energy users in a household these days are electronics.

Even "big" users like ranges can be converted to DC and then make efficient use of induction. Air conditioning units could use VFD motors and be intelligent about required operating speeds, etc...

When I think about my house, other than my air conditioning, washer/electric dryer, and refrigerator, everything is capable of being a 24/48v DC device.

For a future home, it really just doesn't make sense to run the entire house as 110v AC. Run a few dedicated circuits to the mechanicals, laundry room, and kitchen, perhaps, but the rest of the house simply doesn't need it. Even a vacuum cleaner would run perfectly fine on 24v DC power (48v would be better, though).

Amperages would have to be higher... and maybe that's the drawback? It'd be interesting to hear from some electrical engineers on this.