<blockquote>By comparison, Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power produces around 1,100 MW all day everyday, 18,000 GW hrs annually, on only 960 acres.</blockquote>Unless <a href="http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/93/5a/8/4821/Diablo_Canyon_Seismic_DPO.pdf" rel="nofollow">there's an earthquake</a>. Or <a href="http://judithcurry.com/2015/02/12/open-thread-24/#comment-674263" rel="nofollow">it gets shut down due to the <b>risk</b></a> of an earthquake.
Comment on Week in review by AK
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Comment on Week in review by Danny Thomas
Curious George,
Not looking at the source, do you mind sharing the issues you have with content?
Here’s why I ask. It seems that land use/ag practices are something that can satisfy everyone, no matter if it is intended as mitigation of CO2 or not. This seems to this reader to be an area that can be implemented with alternative benefits. Since we taxpayers are investors in farming anyway (fairly bilaterally), is this not an area we can remove from contention? Wasn’t it Freeman Dyson who indicated increasing biomass all by itself may be net beneficial? I’d appreciate your thoughts.
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Comment on Open thread by Ed Martin
They have a video and the link to the study here.
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Comment on Week in review by Jim D
Another important measure is CO2 per GDP (carbon intensity) and China is one of the least efficient by that measure. If it was as efficient as the US and EU in producing its GDP, global CO2 emissions would be 10% lower. There is a lot of room for improvement. Profligate is the word for China.
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Comment on Week in review by AK
<blockquote>Another important measure is CO2 per GDP (carbon intensity) and China is one of the least efficient by that measure.</blockquote>Is this total CO2 emitted, or <b>fossil</b> CO2 emitted. AFAIK China's doing a lot of work with methane from bio-mass fermentation, for power generation and heating. CO2 from such sources shouldn't be counted.
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Comment on Week in review by Danny Thomas
Jim2,
Not intending to but heads with you today, but no, leaving it up to manufacturers w/o oversite has led to negative issues in the past. I followed ethanol after the gas cruch in Carter years. Congress provided ethanol resistant legislation as MTBE was made by FF industry. MTBE is not indicated as a known carcinogen, but will likely cause adverse health issues at 20-40ppb http://www.epa.gov/mtbe/water.htm. States (Not Fed) imposed water/MTBE regulations leading to its use being stopped in the US http://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2006/mtbe2006/mtbe2006.pdf. General info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_tert-butyl_ether
A net good use of gov’t regulation.
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Comment on Week in review by Jim D
Yes, CO2 of the fossil kind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions
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Comment on Week in review by Rob Ellison
MP: We certainly need to mitigate the amount of carbon and methane and nitrous oxide that agriculture adds to the atmosphere, but we can do much more than mitigate, because we can use agriculture to sequester large amounts of carbon. In fact, a third of the carbon in the atmosphere today was originally in the soil. Not in the form of fossil fuels but in the form of soil carbon.
RE: So you’re saying farming can recapture carbon in the soil?
MP: The body of science telling us exactly how to do it is still fairly undeveloped. There’s lots of experimentation going on, but farmers can show you that a patch of soil over there used to be exposed rock, and now there’s six inches of soil. Much of that is carbon.
There are fairly obvious ways to go – and building soil carbon is a no brainer.
As is conservation and restoration of ecosystems – and reducing black carbon – for many reasons that have nothing to do with greenhouse gases.
Instead the focus is on fossil fuels – the minor part of the issue of emissions – for which the rational response is energy innovation.
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Comment on Week in review by Curious George
Overall the author has some sense, but – quote: “We need a lot more vegetarians than we have. There’s no question that the amount of meat we’re eating – nine ounces per person, per day in this country on average — is one of the most significant parts of one’s climate footprint. And we need to reduce it because the rest of the world wants to eat meat the way we do.”
Not even Hitler (a vegetarian himself) did want to turn most of population into vegetarians – but then he had his own ideas how to handle a population explosion, which is the real problem. Not even mentioned in the article.
Good farmers always took care of their soil, and produced biomass. I fail to see even a spark of original thinking there.
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Comment on Week in review by michael hart
Obstinance is its own reward.
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Comment on Open thread by jim2
Danny, it would be one thing if the government were selective about what it spends money on. But it passed all rational bounds long ago. It spends like a drunken sailor already. We actually need to see what we can cut spending on instead of finding more boondoggles.
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Comment on Open thread by jim2
Also, I was specifically discussing sinkum, not floatsam.
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Comment on Open thread by jim2
90% of the plastic sinks, BTW.
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Comment on Week in review by jim2
You might want to reconsider going to the beach, Danny.
From the article:
…
Potential Chronic Health Effects:
CARCINOGENIC EFFECTS: Classified 1 (Proven for human.) by IARC. Classified A2 (Suspected for human.) by ACGIH
…
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Comment on Week in review by Danny Thomas
Curious George,
Thank you. Found this:
http://extension.psu.edu/animals/dairy/news/2011/wild-ruminants-burp-methane-too
Includes wild and factors todays sheep/cattle vs. wild bison in past. Net once human population included I approximate as equal. But, this is U.S. only.
Then if we factor energy production: http://seco.cpa.state.tx.us/energy-sources/biomass/manure.php
Maybe there’s a net positive.
The “original” thinking is to modify from monoculture.
Maybe there’s a net positive.
The “original” thinking is to modify from monoculture. “Ecosytem” farming isn’t done much, and no-till can be done more. Add a methane power plant at feedlots, and viola`.
Low hanging fruit, all. But sellable, I’d say.
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Comment on Week in review by Rud Istvan
Stephen, let me underscore your point concerning ethanol, but only to the E10 blend wall. Beyond makes no sense. Details in first two books. Not only does E10 raise the fuel octane rating (not just important for engine knock, also means refiners can get more gasoline from a barrel of crude), it is an environmentally friendly substitute for MBTE (smog reduction), which has proven to be a significant groundwater pollutant from leaky gas station storage tanks. Plus the food impact is much less than politicized. True, about 41% of the US corn crop by weight goes to ethanol production. But what is not reported is that 27% is returned to farmers as distillers grain. On my dairy farm, that protein and cellulose enriched, carbohydrate poor feed supplement means we feed less alfalfa (a cows ruminent diet requires mostly protein and cellulose; carbohydrate in crushed corn is the supplement to adjust butterfat production…Swiss pastured dairy cows eat nothing but grass but are not as milk productive) and so can grow more corn. The food impact is not a complete wash, but close. And most corn (except in Africa) is used as animal feed to produce meat protein, with a conversion caloric efficiency averaging 4:1 across all common animal food species (chicken and farmed salmon best; beef worst; goat and pig middle. Pork caloric conversion is about 4:1). Not at all the simple MSM talking points pro and con.
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Comment on Week in review by Danny Thomas
Jim2,
But, but, but, states and feds haven’t banned it yet! Didn’t see that one coming! Well done. Note to self, don’t drink MTBE and don’t eat/inhale sand.
Gotta get me a bubble to live in! Regards.
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Comment on Week in review by mosomoso
Intensive agriculture, steel frame housing, the decline of newsprint etc etc…Once it becomes uneconomic to hack away at the local biomass the stuff grows back alarmingly and makes its own rules for fast success and domination. Nature couldn’t care less about concepts like “pristine” and “wilderness”. You then have to manage regrowth, which means spending lots of money to fund actual conservation. You also have to find ways to exploit regrowth since you can’t just keep conserving, controlling or suppressing.
One of the strangest effects of mass Greenism is a general blindness to regrowth and its consequences. A huge acreage of land can be turning back to forest and many only see the tree cut down near a roadside. People fuss and fiddle over community tree plantings and don’t grasp (or don’t want to grasp) that an overgrown back yard or abandoned farm is a tree planting, and probably a more efficient one. The trick is to make your planting more efficient and useful than the overgrown yard or farm.
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Comment on Open thread by Danny Thomas
Jim2,
No argument that in many ways it’s over done. But scapel wielded by skilled hands not a butcher knife by you or me. Still say we could get much of the way there with a couple lawn chairs and appropriate beverage.
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Comment on Open thread by Danny Thomas
Jim2,
I didn’t know it was that high a percentage, but some does. The stuff on top is hard on wildlife and asthetically unpleasing. And it washes up on that evil old cancer causing sand beach. :) So, I’ll pay for your road, but you gotta let me have the plastic cleaned up. Deal?
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