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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

#151

Post by noja »

cagenut wrote: post #28
noja wrote: post #2

Is there an ordered list of what produces most pollution? What's at the top? Is there an easy way to answer the question "I just did environmentally bad thing X, now what can I do to offset that?"

realistically there is no way to "offset" carbon emissions today. there are plenty of people that will take your money, but to date they can be considered at best beta tests, not functioning solutions. your choice is to vote hard environmentalist, agitate hard for immediate change, stop flying and stop driving and stop eating red meat. or don't. but don't delude yourself. a lot of people wish so hard there were easie…

> realistically there is no way to "offset" carbon emissions today.

Of course there is. How many steaks is a flight from London to Paris?

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

#152

Post by m3kw9 »

midnitewarrior wrote: post #17

Telling a lie then saying 3 Hail Marys means you are forgiven for the lie, it doesn't fix the lie. As such, planting a tree to be forgiven for going on a flight that burns carbon-laden jet fuel doesn't fix what you did. Fossil fuels are excess carbon atoms sequestered safely deep inside the Earth. Unless you can find a way to put them back there, there's no fixing the situation. Planting a tree does capture carbon. H…

Trees are ok, but they create a carbon debt, because the tree stores the co2, and when it dies either in fire or fermenting, it releases that back. It’s more like a 50-100 year debt contract.

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

#153

Post by valw »

bin0 wrote: post #144
valw wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point, pulling energy out of thin air will end up cheaper than doing expensive drilling operations. A lot of people seem to believe that abundant clean energy is a sufficient solution for our environmental problems. A huge part of GHG emissions is due to deforesting and cattle, which has little to do with energy consumption. History also seems to show that giving humanity abundant energy will only lead to i…

Cattle likely won't change. I'm going to keep eating meat. And deforestation may not change due to exploding population. However, that doesn't mean we can't capture carbon. I've seen numerous promising business ideas to capture carbon and convert it into useful materials; I think it's more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one.

> I've seen numerous promising business ideas to capture carbon and convert it into useful materials; I think it's more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one.

Yeah, we've all seen them - they make for fantastic headlines. None of them is as viable as protecting forests / planting trees by a long shot. They systematically fail to mention that the energy consumption is super high or that they're not scalable in another way - at least not in time.

> Cattle likely won't change. I'm going to keep eating meat [...] more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one.

You don't need everyone to go vegan - we only need people to eat a lot less meat and diaries, and / or choose meat with a smaller footprint (e.g chicken). It's simply not reasonable to use 40% of arable lands to feed cattle given the environmental and food challenges of the 21st century.

If you're not willing to make the relatively small lifestyle change that is changing your diet, then let me tell you with blunt honesty: you're an instance of the most severe cause of climate change - privileged people not willing to give up on some of their comfort. This attitude is also collectively irrational, because climate change if not prevented will force us to much more radical lifestyle changes. I do hope you will reconsider.

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

#154

Post by amluto »

bin0 wrote: post #144
valw wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point, pulling energy out of thin air will end up cheaper than doing expensive drilling operations. A lot of people seem to believe that abundant clean energy is a sufficient solution for our environmental problems. A huge part of GHG emissions is due to deforesting and cattle, which has little to do with energy consumption. History also seems to show that giving humanity abundant energy will only lead to i…

Cattle likely won't change. I'm going to keep eating meat. And deforestation may not change due to exploding population. However, that doesn't mean we can't capture carbon. I've seen numerous promising business ideas to capture carbon and convert it into useful materials; I think it's more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one.

There are reasonably credible proposals for minor dietary changes for the cows that will drastically reduce methane emissions. A tax on cattle methane emissions could easily make this happen.

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

#155

Post by scythe »

midnitewarrior wrote: post #17

Telling a lie then saying 3 Hail Marys means you are forgiven for the lie, it doesn't fix the lie. As such, planting a tree to be forgiven for going on a flight that burns carbon-laden jet fuel doesn't fix what you did. Fossil fuels are excess carbon atoms sequestered safely deep inside the Earth. Unless you can find a way to put them back there, there's no fixing the situation. Planting a tree does capture carbon. H…

The formation of peat in bogs does sequester carbon, but the timescale is long, on the order of several thousand years. However, higher atmospheric CO2 leads to greater plant biomass at “equilibrium”. Studies suggest that about 75% of CO2 has a half-life of decades and the remaining 25% has a half-life of tens of millenia, as I recall.

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

#156

Post by BurningFrog »

midnitewarrior wrote: post #17

Telling a lie then saying 3 Hail Marys means you are forgiven for the lie, it doesn't fix the lie. As such, planting a tree to be forgiven for going on a flight that burns carbon-laden jet fuel doesn't fix what you did. Fossil fuels are excess carbon atoms sequestered safely deep inside the Earth. Unless you can find a way to put them back there, there's no fixing the situation. Planting a tree does capture carbon. H…

> Planting a tree does capture carbon. However, when it dies and rots, all the carbon gets re-released over time back into the atmosphere.

Unless you build something out of the wood, instead of using cement, for example.

Even if the tree is just left to rot or is burned, this is 50-100 years in the future. Giving the world 50-100 years of buffer time to figure out how to solve the technical and political problems around climate change is close enough to a solution that I'd take it in a heart beat!

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

#157

Post by jodrellblank »

valw wrote: post #153
bin0 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cattle likely won't change. I'm going to keep eating meat. And deforestation may not change due to exploding population. However, that doesn't mean we can't capture carbon. I've seen numerous promising business ideas to capture carbon and convert it into useful materials; I think it's more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one.

> I've seen numerous promising business ideas to capture carbon and convert it into useful materials; I think it's more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one. Yeah, we've all seen them - they make for fantastic headlines. None of them is as viable as protecting forests / planting trees by a long shot. They systematically fail to mention that the energy consumption is super high or that they're not s…

60% of America is overweight or obese, and America throws out enough food to feed .. a lot of people, every day. Shame me for eating meat when you stop them from overeating food full stop - and all the farm machinery and transport and packaging involved in that.

I don't have children, I don't drive them to school in a SUV or to a holiday in DisneyWorld, I have never launched a SpaceX rocket, or lived on my own in a full size house. I have never been on a cruise. I don't live or work in an air-conditioned place.

To put it bluntly, f' off about calling people "the most severe cause of climate change" for eating a beef sandwich without considering anything else. It's unhelpful, provocative, and completely incorrect.

I didn't attend an international destination wedding this year, which a lot of my family did. How many bacon sandwiches does that earn me compared to my family?

If your answer is none because climate change is a global catastrophe and everyone has to pitch in, then what incentive does that give anyone? If any carbon slack of my reduced comfort is just getting eaten up by other people's indifference, aren't I better off being indifferent as well?

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

#158

Post by bin0 »

valw wrote: post #153
bin0 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cattle likely won't change. I'm going to keep eating meat. And deforestation may not change due to exploding population. However, that doesn't mean we can't capture carbon. I've seen numerous promising business ideas to capture carbon and convert it into useful materials; I think it's more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one.

> I've seen numerous promising business ideas to capture carbon and convert it into useful materials; I think it's more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one. Yeah, we've all seen them - they make for fantastic headlines. None of them is as viable as protecting forests / planting trees by a long shot. They systematically fail to mention that the energy consumption is super high or that they're not s…

> privileged people

I don't eat a ton of beef, but no, beef is relatively affordable (at least in America). But I do eat a lot more chicken, and not a ton of beef. With that said, I want a good steak once every few months and a burger once a week. More importantly, I don't want the government saying "thou shalt" about my beef consumption, nor do I want people finger-wagging at me about it.

America can sustainably raise cattle. She has requisite land. It seems that people are saying that because everyone else can't do it, we need to change.

This is also the tragedy of the commons. If I emit less, others will feel they can emit more. I refuse to be "the sucker" that loses this game theory problem. With that said, I don't emit that much (all things considered). My biggest carbon outputs are driving (which I have to do) and air conditioning (I will not give this up; come live in hundred-degree Texas summers without it and then tell me to give it up). So I don't consider myself to be a catastrophic contributor to any thing. Besides, would money not be better spent curing cancer? I'm not sure that I believe the "impending doom" stuff about global warming. Humans are the most remarkably adaptable species on the planet; we will adapt to a hotter earth if need be.

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

#159

Post by elorant »

wbronitsky wrote: post #81
elorant wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. First of all, you have to account for deforestation which is already happening in unprecedented pace. So while you'll go around planning trees, in some other part of the world people are chopping them down to provide more land for agriculture or to support the demand for wood. So the overall net effect might be zero. Aside from that, the fact is that you need a shit ton of trees to negate climate chan…

You seemingly just argued for planting more trees, in that if we did not try and replace the trees being cut down, we would have a negative growth rate of trees, which seems much worse than 0 growth rate. I’m not sure why you dismissed out of hand the argument, as it only took a hot second do deduce that it’s actually a good thing.

You misunderstood. I'm not arguing whether we should plant trees or not, but whether that is enough. The answer is that it's not. We have to do much more things than just plant trees.

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

#160

Post by ggcdn »

voyager2 wrote: post #88
ggcdn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is maybe okay for single family homes in arid regions, but not practical for denser forms of housing. Which we should be striving for, if we're worried about reducing pollution

CEB has been used for centuries in Britain. Arid is obviously not a factor. It's also been used for multi-story buildings. I'm not sure how dense housing reduces pollution though. Some of the least polluting housing in the world is rural, e.g. the Amish. edit: I should have said "earthen" construction has been used in Britain. Cob rather than CEB.

It's not possible for us all to live like the Amish. Dense housing (as opposed to sprawling single family homes) is more efficient to build, heat, provide utilities, and provide services around. It seems pretty self evident to me that urban living can produce less pollution over its lifecyle.
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