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Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

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Re: Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

#111

Post by graycat »

There's a video documentary on YouTube, complete with starting with PM Thatcher and her concerns about the coal miners union and the Mideast oil kingdoms and through the present with sun spots, etc. There is a lot from MIT prof Lindzen. The 800 year lag in the graph Gore put up is made clear. The Medieval Warm period, the Little Ice Age, and the cooling from 1940 to 1970 are also clear.

The URL is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg

Now where does this documentary go wrong?

I will mention one place: Their little cartoon has sun light hitting the surface of the earth, reflecting, and then heating the atmosphere. Well, it mostly isn't just reflection. Instead, the sunlight gets absorbed by the surface, the surface warms, and then the surface radiates, as in a Planck gray body in the infrared. CO2 absorbs, and warms, in three narrow bands out in the infrared, on band for each of bending, stretching, and twisting of the molecule. CO2 won't absorb visible light -- e.g., exhale and see if you can see the CO2 or its shadow from absorbing visible light! And, as in the cartoon, the visible light already traveled through the whole atmosphere to the ground without being absorbed so that any reflected light should just continue until it hits a cloud or just escapes into outer space. So, the main point is the Planck black body effect that in effect converts the visible light CO2 won't absorb to infrared light CO2 can absorb. But, as Lindzen explains, that all has to be a tiny effect, small potatoes.

Just as a question, does anyone have figures on tons per year of (i) CO2 from volcanoes and (ii) human activities?

For another, does anyone have (i) the number of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere and (ii) the number of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by human activities in, say, a year?

For one more, if the temperature of the top, say, 1000 feet, of all the oceans warmed by 1 F, how much CO2, in tons, would be released -- warmer water absorbs less CO2?

Last, what was the average temperature of the oceans (i) just before the Little Ice Age, (ii) at the end of the Little Ice Age (say, at the end of the Maunder Minimum and the return of usual sun spot activity), (iii) in year 1900, and (iv) now?

Re: Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

#112

Post by yters »

bin0 wrote: post #83
yters wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dump some infertility causing chemical in all the water supplies. Or, nuke a bunch of countries, which has the added bonus of cooling down the earth. But, it's unclear that even completely eliminating humanity would reverse global warming.

Jesus Christ, you're not serious, are you? How evil can you get? The ends do not justify the means.

No, not serious. Just pointing out what the alternative seems to entail.

Re: Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

#113

Post by dillonmckay »

taneq wrote: post #61
shereadsthenews wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually concrete walls have a foam core. Solid concrete is only about R0.5/in, about half as good as wood. Even so, insulated cavities are totally obsolete. Exterior foam is far superior.

Wow, really? Interesting, the one's I'm familiar with (used in tilt-up construction) are just solid concrete (maybe plus some rebar). Totally with you on exterior foam though, you want the insulation outside of the thermal mass if at all possible.

Check out ICF:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulating_concrete_form

There may be some copyright shenanigans w/ that page.

There have also been successfully constructed in-ground pools using this material, but appears to be controversial to traditional pool-builders.

Re: Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

#114

Post by Fjolsvith »

torpfactory wrote: post #89
xcklo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an engineering challenge, but not in development and innovation so much as in policy and implementation. There is a lack of understanding of that what is happening isn't a choice. It is an escalating situation where things you don't deal with today will cost more to deal with tomorrow. Something we and our societies aren't used to. Rather we are used to a Moore's law situation where things get better by themsel…

It won't get better by itself, hence the "call to arms". Engineers need to choose to work on, maybe even for less money or less job security, solutions which are so much better that policy and implementation will contort themselves toward the new paradigms. Politics is the really effective avenue to solve this but it is a lot easier if better alternative solutions exist. I wanted to emphasize that the optimism can be…

Earth will be the terraforming planet we will cut our teeth on.

Re: Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

#115

Post by kgwgk »

hokkos wrote: post #105
valw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to imply that planting trees cannot durably decrease the CO2 levels in the atmosphere; if so, your reasoning and conclusion are incorrect. Increasing the biomass of trees (e.g, growing a new forest) does reduce the CO2 levels; true, each tree in this forest will at some point die and re-release its carbon, but another will grow in its place; therefore, if the forest has grown and stays there forever the the…

This only works if we are sure that the forest will stay a forest for several hundreds of thousands of years, the time the offseted co2 needs to disappear and absolutely nobody can assure that. Not consuming fossil carbon means it will stay in the earth mantle for a geological time. So carbon offsets by planting tree is a scam, and we need better than that.

Neither can anybody assure that the carbon/oil will remain untouched for hundreds of thousands of years.

Re: Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

#116

Post by torpfactory »

valw wrote: post #86
torpfactory wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optimistic side of me reads this as a call to arms for engineers. The political and economic calculations aren't stagnant. If there emerge better and cheaper alternatives, the market will usually make the switch happen. The key thing is the presence of better alternatives. We're already seeing this in action with electricity generation. Solar and wind are cheaper for bulk generation than fossil sources. A few inc…

Climate change requires a call to arms for everyone. Many scientific experts don't believe that enhanced technology can be the main solution. True, technology can be a part of the solution, but changing our values and life habits are much more important. That's why top recommended environmental measure is carbon taxes, not subsidizing energy efficiency. We've already made dramatic technological progress on our energy…

To be clear, I never said technology was the only solution. We have to parallel-path this entire enterprise. We need a change of culture and values just as much as technology. I'm not counting on only technology, but I really do believe we'll need both approaches here. As engineers, our part in this may be to create technological solutions. I hope culture thought leaders do their part and espouse a different way of living that replaces material consumption and status symbols with real human community.

Re: Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

#117

Post by valw »

hokkos wrote: post #105
valw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to imply that planting trees cannot durably decrease the CO2 levels in the atmosphere; if so, your reasoning and conclusion are incorrect. Increasing the biomass of trees (e.g, growing a new forest) does reduce the CO2 levels; true, each tree in this forest will at some point die and re-release its carbon, but another will grow in its place; therefore, if the forest has grown and stays there forever the the…

This only works if we are sure that the forest will stay a forest for several hundreds of thousands of years, the time the offseted co2 needs to disappear and absolutely nobody can assure that. Not consuming fossil carbon means it will stay in the earth mantle for a geological time. So carbon offsets by planting tree is a scam, and we need better than that.

> This only works if we are sure that the forest will stay a forest for several hundreds of thousands of year

You do realize that carbon sequestrated in a forest 100ks of years is prevented from contributed to global warming during all that time period, right?

> Not consuming fossil carbon means it will stay in the earth mantle for a geological time.

Nobody's arguing against that. But it's silly to argue that not consuming fossil fuels is a better solution than carbon sequestration. We urgently need to do BOTH. When your house is burning, you don't choose between calling the firemen and using the extinguisher - you do both.

> So carbon offsets by planting tree is a scam, and we need better than that.

That's naive and simplistic. If carbon offsetting was widely adopted, it would 1) be a fast way to start our transition towards a sustainable economy and 2) encourage reducing fossil fuel consumptions as it gets more and more expensive (as it will inevitably).

When it comes to fighting climate change, what matters is results, not this sort of uninformed rethoric.

Re: Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

#118

Post by dillonmckay »

gruez wrote: post #98
dillonmckay wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, would it not be more environmentally friendly to bury, not recycle, plastics back into the earth?

Recycling is carbon neutral - it doesn't cause co2 to be released nor does it sequester any. You can argue that the process itself generates co2, but so does producing virgin plastic.

How is recycling plastic carbon neutral?

The amount of energy required to chew/melt/process the plastic, the energy to transport the recyclables to the processing facility, and then the transportation costs to ship the decycled material to the buyer(s)?

Re: Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

#119

Post by hokkos »

trophycase wrote: post #106
bin0 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way this is happening is if the planet gets depopulated of humans rapidly. Please don't tell me you're one of those "earth would be better of were we all dead" people. I can't stand that kind of post-modernist, nihilistic garbage. I'm not mister optimist, but still, that's way too far. Also, that kind of rhetoric is going to end up being a justification for some one very evil doing some thing very bad. > T…

You use "post-modernism" like Jordan Peterson uses "post-modernism"... incorrectly, and likely without having read any of it. If anything, reducing population (not through genocide obviously) for expedience is actually a very neoliberal idea

There is liberal in neoliberal, and there would be no population control like the one child policy with more limited intervention from the state.

Re: Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World

#120

Post by EGreg »

bin0 wrote: post #102
dictum wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> post-modernist, nihilistic garbage This argument predates postmodernism by two centuries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap If anything, postmodernism wouldn't acknowledge a way to classify people into "worth-living" and "not-worth-living"; if not by ethics or humanism, because it would find most or all criteria in the filters to be bullshit .

Malthusianism more or less espouses an equilibrium - short on food, people die, more food available, people have more kids, cycle repeats. Not that all the humans need to die. There's also a great deal of difference between "I believe there may be a lack of food" (but not passing a value judgement on the situation) and "I believe people need to die" (claiming the "greater good").

I don’t think the parent you responded to meant by depopulation the TOTAL extinction of humans. It’s likely they meant, say, massive increases in family planning and women’s education leading to people having fewer kids later. Child mortality has been greatly reduced, someone should tell many African men! Religion plays a big role in this as well, around the world.

We have learned how to live on a credit card at the expense of our children. We imagine we have “escaped the Malthusian trap”, but the bill comes due!

More people means more factory farms, overfishing, desertification, deforestation, plastic pollution, garbage and releasing greenhouse gases. The accumulation of garbage and the depletion of resources can throw delicate ecosystems out of whack (bleached corals, for instance, or collapse of bee colonies).

Ar best, we are reducing biodiversity greatly and turning the earth into a monoculture of fatory farms for feeding a growing population of humans.

At worst, that’s one unsustainable step away from collapse.

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