It’s About Making Babies!

Tully.ca writes about “Is Carbon Neutrality Actually Possible?”

Although this is good, and don’t get me wrong, it is good, yet where do we draw the line on what is carbon negative, neutral, or positive?

While you are being skeptical, you might consider a couple more points.

The plastic bottle - is still carbon based, right? I mean, glass bottles could be done carbon neutral, managing the cartons (re-use wood, like back in the 1950’s and 1960’s) and energy sources used.

When you are talking about carbon footprint, does recycling - meaning keeping plastics and other carbon forms available, possibly to be burned in the future to co2 - or landfill actually withdraw the carbon, even temporarily, from chance burning or fermenting back to co2 and greenhouse gases?

When you reforest, that is good. What about the 1,000 acres [EDIT: should be 1,000 square miles!] of rain forest that Brazil claims to have chopped down and begun farming - last year alone? What about reports that the forests of Southeast Asia and China are expected to be completely denuded in the next few years, as the trees are cut to provide charcoal for heating homes and cooking, and structural wood? Sounds like good intentions, but spit in the bucket for effect.

Biofuels suffered a setback in reputation this last week. One report points out the use of fermented biostuffs to create fuels actually produces more greenhouse gases that burning fossil fuels.

There are many carbon neutral forms of energy. Geothermal and coldwater ocean ducts, solar, wind, nuclear, and hyrdodynamic come to mind. There are the recent advances in generating electricity from motion - from ocean waves to actions of the human knee to clothing material with nanogenerators embedded. But the human-powered stuff isn’t carbon neutral - we consume plants and animals that consumed plants, and emit co2. Carbon neutral or even ‘existing carbon’ cycles don’t ‘put the genie (excess carbon) back in the bottle.’

Many people have been concerned about the level of greenhouse gases emitted by belching cows. I wonder if anyone has actually proven that an acre of grass grazed by cows produces more total greenhouse gases over the course of a year, than an acre left on it’s own (fallow) or used to raise grains for food.

For all I know, composting may be a serious threat to global warming. Except the recent reports that the Northern Hemisphere cooled this last 4 quarters - cooled more than the global warming in the last 100 years, according to NASA and others.

I would like to see more work done on micro-hydroelectric systems. Something one could install in a creek with occasional 1 or 2 foot deep water, without creating a major basin. Average the system into the power grid as small farm-sized wind generators have been. Maybe someone could begin a ’sustainable growth harvest’ emblem to designate lumber and wood products taken from sustained, managed woodlands, rather than clear-cut lumber projects.

It seems that for now, extending forest growth is our best ‘carbon positive’ action. Which is barely carbon positive - since the wood will eventually either burn or decompose back to co2. Maybe we can build a fission reactor that runs on charcoal, and produces electricity, heat, and various metals on demand. Maybe I won’t hold my breath.

Wow. I read an article at Wired magazine on Gore blaming the US for stalling UN Climate talks at Bali.

My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali,” said Gore

Sounds like Al Gore, the guy that invented the Internet and speaks in Microsoft PowerPoint, is taking a page from the Natalie (Dixie Chicks) play book. What next, Al, a T-shirt that spells ‘F U - G W B’?

Natalie and Al both spoke their own feelings, they said things they feel to be honest expressions. But both tried to use a public stage and their own publicity to show disrespect to their country. How rude. The Dixie Chicks still make good country music. I can’t say about Al Gore, I haven’t seen any of his recent PowerPoint projects.

One little perspective leapt out of the report at me. See, the European Union agrees with Al Gore, that scientists have proved that the earth is warming up, that industrial emissions are the cause, and that anything we do will matter - other than move to higher ground.

Aren’t these nameless hordes of ‘publish or perish’ scientists, racing to get papers published to keep their University positions, using the same science that proved Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction? And we are supposed to believe that *this time* the (Clinton) White House and other political leaders (looking for a mob or an issue to pose in front of) haven’t ‘interpreted’ the results?

Do we ignore the NASA reports that all the planets in the Solar System are warming - implying that not grass clippings, cow belches, or even Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentations have anything to do with causing or curing Global Warming? And what about the model that shows the elastic nature of the environment, that it will self-correct - that at a certain point the warming (if it is warming) will reach a trigger - and bring on the next Ice Age wave of global climate changes?

Does a hundred acres of pasture, really, produce less methane over the course of a year, because cows *don’t* graze it - or sheep, or mice or antelopes or deer? What about the decomposition products of trees in woodlands, over the course of several decades? River deltas and residential lawns?

We know that pruning encourages rapid growth. That a lawn grows more grass, faster, because you cut it every week or two. So do the methane and other products from all the clippings of all the lawns contribute significantly to Greenhouse Gases (GHG)? What about when you include the GHG produced in mining the metals, manufacturing the mowers, and fuels to haul away clippings and fuel mowers, or generate from compost heaps?

What is the net GHG effect of cutting trees for lumber? The trimmed leaves and small branches rot decades sooner - the boards decades later than ‘natural’ cycles. In Oklahoma and other regions fields are burned off every third year or so. What is the impact of burning vs. letting the vegetable matter decay, on production of GHG?

I am convinced that we have only part of the story on GHG - including whether or not it has anything to do with the ozone layer or global warming. Remember, the Earth still has active volcanoes that throw immense amounts of ionizing gases and dusts into the atmosphere - which has remained relatively stable over the course of millenia. The Earth still receives variations in the Solar ‘wind’ of strange particles from the sun, and periodic incursions of different kinds of dust and compounds from meteors. I recall one statistic that the earth receives the equivalent of a 1/8 inch of dust over the entire globe, from the dust and meteors (shooting stars) that hit the earth’s atmosphere each year. That depth might be as much as a 1/2 inch, I didn’t re-check my fact on that one. Sue me for bad science. How many ‘Global Warming’ scientists have you double checked this week?

It seems that industrial sources are ‘easy’ targets for tree huggers. Many people have been taught to ‘hate’ rich people - they obviously did evil to take so much money from lots of good people, right? Easy targets, ready made enemies, and questionable science. I recall the Church’s Burning Times - witch hunts, in truth - were immensely popular. Women were dispossessed of property, made to appear guilty of ‘unspeakable’ crimes. A great show.

If the EU and UN want a ’show of faith’ - how about replanting the Amazon Rain Forest, the immense forests of Africa and South Asia cut for charcoal? Oops - those make poor enemies - poor people use that charcoal, and hating poor people is bad for Tree Hugger business. Besides, listing the names of all the people using the charcoal would take a really big PowerPoint slide.

Give it a rest, Mr. Gore.