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Post by laughter on Jul 4, 2019 17:12:10 GMT -5
Never had enough interest to look into the details, but do you know offhand whether or not Musky has ever turned a private-sector profit unsupported by any sovereign and/or debt? That dude should chill 'bout "the singularity". He's only so wigged out 'bout it 'cause he actually believes he's in personal control of the companies he owns and the machinery that gave rise to and sustains them.  Who cares because of him and his patents, electric cars are here to stay. One more insult to the great E, not Enigma, but Elon, and I will have to have satisfaction. There must be a duel to the death. Choose your weapon. Green and uncombustible. Donuts or fried cheese curds? It's still counterintuituve to me that electric cars are carbon negative to i.c.e.'s given how much of the grid is still powered by fossils. Even after Joe Scott explained it in a video. I smell a colorless gas.  |
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Post by laughter on Jul 4, 2019 17:12:57 GMT -5
Well, in keeping with the theme of this thread I just noticed that Anchorage, Alaska is going to set a new heat record today that will continue for the next six days--temps will rise into the high 80's. Even the weathermen/women are stunned according to the article I read regarding the record-breaking high temps and the fact that the temps will stay at record-breaking levels for a week. They claim that nothing like that has ever happened in recorded history. This reminded me that when Carol and I traveled to Alaska last month, we talked with Canadians who told us that Canada is now experiencing forest fires on a scale never before seen. axeshoelly, the windshield-bug thingy is probly the best anexdope you've given on the topic yet. |
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Post by zendancer on Jul 4, 2019 17:34:03 GMT -5
Well, in keeping with the theme of this thread I just noticed that Anchorage, Alaska is going to set a new heat record today that will continue for the next six days--temps will rise into the high 80's. Even the weathermen/women are stunned according to the article I read regarding the record-breaking high temps and the fact that the temps will stay at record-breaking levels for a week. They claim that nothing like that has ever happened in recorded history. This reminded me that when Carol and I traveled to Alaska last month, we talked with Canadians who told us that Canada is now experiencing forest fires on a scale never before seen. axeshoelly, the windshield thingy is probly the best anexdope you've given on the topic yet. Haha. Maybe so, but don't forget my super flood events and straight-line wind events. Not only that, but in two weeks I'm hiring a company to dig a giant French drain around a septic field in one of our office parks. Why? Because for the first time in 25 years this year we had a septic field quit working due to a long-term rain event that raised the water table above the output side of the septic tank. At first I thought the drain line had gotten plugged, but then I got a set of posthole diggers, and started to dig down to the line. Within eight inches of the surface I hit the water table and realized that there was nothing we could do to fix the problem permanently at that time. The ground was too soft to bring in any heavy machinery. We had to buy a $300 pump and 200 feet of 2" diameter hose and pump the groundwater around the tank away from that area for several days until the water table finally dropped below the output side of the tank. Since that time I've read that hundreds of septic systems near Miami and other low-lying areas (or heavy rain event area) are also failing for the same type reason. Miami and coastal areas also have the added problem that salt water is now migrating inland underground (due to sea level rise) and that's killing vegetation and in some cases lifting caskets out of the ground. At least we haven't had that problem yet! For the first time in my forty years of construction-related activities I'm having to take seriously the possibility of both mind-boggling rain events and massive fire events. I've built dozens of homes in forested areas in the past, but today I look at forested subdivisions as potential locations for Paradise, CA--type events. Any development without two paths of egress and a relatively nearby area free of forests represents a significant potential hazard. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 4, 2019 18:55:35 GMT -5
My hope/guess is that before we reach the point of no return, say in the next 30 years, some genius scientist will discover a relatively inexpensive way to separate hydrogen and oxygen in/as water and earth will use hydrogen as its predominate source of energy rather than burning fossil fuels. If we wait for people to simply wise up and go green at the expense of greed, we are pretty doomed. Dollars rule.
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Post by zendancer on Jul 5, 2019 5:03:46 GMT -5
My hope/guess is that before we reach the point of no return, say in the next 30 years, some genius scientist will discover a relatively inexpensive way to separate hydrogen and oxygen in/as water and earth will use hydrogen as its predominate source of energy rather than burning fossil fuels. If we wait for people to simply wise up and go green at the expense of greed, we are pretty doomed. Dollars rule. Yes, and people will not want to alter their lifestyles significantly, so unless we can find alternate non-polluting energy sources or build machines for removing more CO2 from the atmosphere than we are emitting, our children's future looks pretty grim. |
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Post by zendancer on Jul 5, 2019 6:48:31 GMT -5
Anchorage hit 90 degrees yesterday, topping the previous record of 85 degrees, and forecasters are calling for the next 7 days to remain at about 90. Until yesterday 85 degrees was the hottest recorded temp in Anchorage in 50 years. It should be interesting to see what happens over the next month or so.
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Post by zendancer on Jul 5, 2019 7:23:41 GMT -5
Yahoo had an article this morning that reported on a study regarding reforestation as a way to reverse climate change. The authors of the study concluded that if an area the size of the USA were reforested in areas around the world that will support the growth of trees and is currently unused, that amount of reforestation would absorb all of the excess carbon that's being pumped into the air. I haven't yet read the study, so I don't know what assumptions were made, but they concluded that reforestation would be the most effective, most economical, and fastest way to break the current cycle and turn it around. I assume that botanists would have to determine the best type trees to plant in the different areas where such reforestation would be feasible. That's probably the best news I've read on this subject because that solution is low-tech and might get people sufficiently motivated to do something.
From a personal perspective, and for people who are interested in doing something to help alleviate the problem and also have the financial capability to do so, it offers a potential way to offset energy usage. Unforested land that's too rugged for modern farming or habitation could be purchased and trees could be planted. That kind of land is usually cheap because it's not appealing to developers. The biggest problem would be determining the necessary width of firebreaks and maintaining them because the likelihood of prolonged droughts and future fires will increase as temps rise. In Tennessee we have lots of steep hilly land that was once cleared and farmed, but now lies unused and overgrown with weeds. I'll be interested to find out how much CO2 can be removed per tree by specie and size. Stay tuned.
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Post by zendancer on Jul 5, 2019 9:18:18 GMT -5
And just to balance out any possible optimism, 16 inches of rain fell in 12 hours near Mumbai, one of the heaviest monsoon rains on record. One dam burst and 7 villages were swept away. The death toll is now 30 and expected to climb. The next twenty or thirty years are going to be interesting.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2019 10:03:20 GMT -5
And just to balance out any possible optimism, 16 inches of rain fell in 12 hours near Mumbai, one of the heaviest monsoon rains on record. One dam burst and 7 villages were swept away. The death toll is now 30 and expected to climb. The next twenty or thirty years are going to be interesting. To buttress Laffy's peculiar outlook, eighty million people died between 1939 and 1945, nearly 3 percent of the world's population at that time attributable to the slaughter that was WWII. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 5, 2019 14:52:16 GMT -5
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 5, 2019 14:57:23 GMT -5
My hope/guess is that before we reach the point of no return, say in the next 30 years, some genius scientist will discover a relatively inexpensive way to separate hydrogen and oxygen in/as water and earth will use hydrogen as its predominate source of energy rather than burning fossil fuels. If we wait for people to simply wise up and go green at the expense of greed, we are pretty doomed. Dollars rule. Yes, and people will not want to alter their lifestyles significantly, so unless we can find alternate non-polluting energy sources or build machines for removing more CO2 from the atmosphere than we are emitting, our children's future looks pretty grim. Yes. I saw a TV program on the planting trees idea a couple of months ago. Two guys had developed how much CO2 could be removed in relation to number of trees planted. I don't remember where I saw it, Nova?, NATGEO? or something on the Science channel? |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2019 17:18:11 GMT -5
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Post by laughter on Jul 6, 2019 7:52:16 GMT -5
axeshoelly, the windshield thingy is probly the best anexdope you've given on the topic yet. Haha. Maybe so, but don't forget my super flood events and straight-line wind events. Not only that, but in two weeks I'm hiring a company to dig a giant French drain around a septic field in one of our office parks. Why? Because for the first time in 25 years this year we had a septic field quit working due to a long-term rain event that raised the water table above the output side of the septic tank. At first I thought the drain line had gotten plugged, but then I got a set of posthole diggers, and started to dig down to the line. Within eight inches of the surface I hit the water table and realized that there was nothing we could do to fix the problem permanently at that time. The ground was too soft to bring in any heavy machinery. We had to buy a $300 pump and 200 feet of 2" diameter hose and pump the groundwater around the tank away from that area for several days until the water table finally dropped below the output side of the tank. Since that time I've read that hundreds of septic systems near Miami and other low-lying areas (or heavy rain event area) are also failing for the same type reason. Miami and coastal areas also have the added problem that salt water is now migrating inland underground (due to sea level rise) and that's killing vegetation and in some cases lifting caskets out of the ground. At least we haven't had that problem yet! For the first time in my forty years of construction-related activities I'm having to take seriously the possibility of both mind-boggling rain events and massive fire events. I've built dozens of homes in forested areas in the past, but today I look at forested subdivisions as potential locations for Paradise, CA--type events. Any development without two paths of egress and a relatively nearby area free of forests represents a significant potential hazard. Well, is weather climate, or not? There's a ski area here in town that used to be packed every winter, but hardly sees use now. I remember what it was like up here when I was a kid: the snow came by early December at the latest and you wouldn't see the ground again until March at the earliest. We obviously had a stretch of warm winters, but over the past 20 years that's been trending the other way -- but definitely not steadily. This past spring was unusually cold here. Obviously, the prospect of a salinity crash in the North Sea that plunges the jet stream south is why they changed the terminology to climate change from global warming .. it's just, noone's ever seen anything like this, so the predictions will almost certainly be off in one way or another. In terms of the oceans absorbing CO 2 does that account for depth, as well, or are the samples only being done close to the surface? |
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Post by laughter on Jul 6, 2019 7:54:33 GMT -5
Yahoo had an article this morning that reported on a study regarding reforestation as a way to reverse climate change. The authors of the study concluded that if an area the size of the USA were reforested in areas around the world that will support the growth of trees and is currently unused, that amount of reforestation would absorb all of the excess carbon that's being pumped into the air. I haven't yet read the study, so I don't know what assumptions were made, but they concluded that reforestation would be the most effective, most economical, and fastest way to break the current cycle and turn it around. I assume that botanists would have to determine the best type trees to plant in the different areas where such reforestation would be feasible. That's probably the best news I've read on this subject because that solution is low-tech and might get people sufficiently motivated to do something. From a personal perspective, and for people who are interested in doing something to help alleviate the problem and also have the financial capability to do so, it offers a potential way to offset energy usage. Unforested land that's too rugged for modern farming or habitation could be purchased and trees could be planted. That kind of land is usually cheap because it's not appealing to developers. The biggest problem would be determining the necessary width of firebreaks and maintaining them because the likelihood of prolonged droughts and future fires will increase as temps rise. In Tennessee we have lots of steep hilly land that was once cleared and farmed, but now lies unused and overgrown with weeds. I'll be interested to find out how much CO2 can be removed per tree by specie and size. Stay tuned. And while there's a dark sort of satire to this idea, it's also not necessarily a bad one: perhaps Monsanto can donate some research and I.P. into a gene splice that would increase the absorption rate of the species' planted. |
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Post by zendancer on Jul 6, 2019 8:50:39 GMT -5
Haha. Maybe so, but don't forget my super flood events and straight-line wind events. Not only that, but in two weeks I'm hiring a company to dig a giant French drain around a septic field in one of our office parks. Why? Because for the first time in 25 years this year we had a septic field quit working due to a long-term rain event that raised the water table above the output side of the septic tank. At first I thought the drain line had gotten plugged, but then I got a set of posthole diggers, and started to dig down to the line. Within eight inches of the surface I hit the water table and realized that there was nothing we could do to fix the problem permanently at that time. The ground was too soft to bring in any heavy machinery. We had to buy a $300 pump and 200 feet of 2" diameter hose and pump the groundwater around the tank away from that area for several days until the water table finally dropped below the output side of the tank. Since that time I've read that hundreds of septic systems near Miami and other low-lying areas (or heavy rain event area) are also failing for the same type reason. Miami and coastal areas also have the added problem that salt water is now migrating inland underground (due to sea level rise) and that's killing vegetation and in some cases lifting caskets out of the ground. At least we haven't had that problem yet! For the first time in my forty years of construction-related activities I'm having to take seriously the possibility of both mind-boggling rain events and massive fire events. I've built dozens of homes in forested areas in the past, but today I look at forested subdivisions as potential locations for Paradise, CA--type events. Any development without two paths of egress and a relatively nearby area free of forests represents a significant potential hazard. Well, is weather climate, or not? There's a ski area here in town that used to be packed every winter, but hardly sees use now. I remember what it was like up here when I was a kid: the snow came by early December at the latest and you wouldn't see the ground again until March at the earliest. We obviously had a stretch of warm winters, but over the past 20 years that's been trending the other way -- but definitely not steadily. This past spring was unusually cold here. Obviously, the prospect of a salinity crash in the North Sea that plunges the jet stream south is why they changed the terminology to climate change from global warming .. it's just, noone's ever seen anything like this, so the predictions will almost certainly be off in one way or another. In terms of the oceans absorbing CO 2 does that account for depth, as well, or are the samples only being done close to the surface? Yes, we once had a ski resort near Crossville, TN, but it soon went bankrupt from lack of snow. I vaguely remember the last time there was enough snow for skiing, and that was about 40 years ago. I think that all of the ski resorts in Gatlinburg are pretty much now defunct, but they still use the lifts for sightseeing. I'm not sure how they measure the ph of the ocean, but my understanding is that the ph varies with depth, as does the salinity. As an example, for some reason there are ultra-high saline lakes on the seafloor in certain areas that are extremely toxic. I watched a nature show where they filmed some sort of unusual eel that can dive into these seafloor lakes for short periods of time in search of some kind of food, but it they stay too long, they go into toxic shock. I'll have to check but I think the ph is measured within the top 700 feet because I've seen that number come up a lot. Apparently the heat of the ocean is also rising only in the top 700 feet and remains at a steadier and colder temp below that level. I assume that as the top 700 feet heats up more and more, it will gradually begin to affect deeper and deeper levels, but I'd need to read more about this to know for sure. I suspect it's the same sort of thing as earth temp. The surface ground where I live may be 80 degrees, but the earth 8 feet down is a fairly steady 55 degrees. |
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