I’m not looking for a flame war. Please start another thread if that’s your aim. There are many things I don’t understand and am simply asking for answers to these questions. I am not arguing anything. I am not trying to make a point. I simply want to learn from you all.

Since clouds can be seen from space, that means that they reflect solar radiation. Do other green house gasses also reflect solar radiation? Are the amounts of radiation reflected by green house gasses taken into account when modeling their impact on the environment?

How many tons of CO2 are released by the U.S. use of fossil fuels each year?

How much carbon is trapped in landfills each year? (People have gone into landfills and found that the old method of packing debris in tightly restricts greatly the ability of decomposers to decompose and therefore release carbon.)

How much carbon is trapped in septic tanks each year?

How much carbon is trapped in sewage treatment plants each year?

How much carbon is trapped in embalmed corpses each year?

Is it feasible to become carbon neutral by artificially trapping carbon containing waste? (If not, can trapping carbon be part of the solution?)

Is the debate over global warming:
A. About weather or not humankind plays a role at all.
B. About weather or not global warming is occurring.
C. About weather or not humankind’s impact on global warming is significant compared to other factors. (IE Increased solar radiation)
D. None of the above. (please tell me what you think the debate is over)

I would say that C comes closest to hitting the nail on the head.

I can take a swing at your questions.

According to the EIA, the total CO2 emissions in the US for 2005 is 5,909 million metric tons, 2,136 MMT from coal, 2,585 MMT from petroleum, and 1,175 MMT from natural. From the same source, global CO2 emissions were 21,162 MMTCO2 (in 2003).

From: http://www.strom.clemson.edu/becker/...s/carbon3.html

It is estimated that human activities spew 150 times the CO2 into the atmosphere compared to volcanoes.

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html

The amount of CO2 trapped by landfills, septic systems, buried corpses, etc. is negligible. But CO2 is only one of a number of greenhouse gases.

Water vapor traps heat. So does methane, which is 21 times more potent an infrared-absorbing agent compared to CO2. Methane levels currently are at the highest concentration in the atmosphere in the last 400,000 years (based on air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice).

You can get all the skinny you want by doing web searches. Wiki has a good article at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

Though the ins and outs may be debated, there is really no argument that since the Industrial Revolution atmospheric CO2 levels have increased more than 25 percent.

Hope that helps....

Water vapour forms clouds but other greenhouse gases don't. Cloud formation reduces the heating effect water vapour would have but doesn't cancel it out. Other greenhouse gases absorb radiation and heat the atmosphere. They don't reflect it. The behaviour of gases can be examined in a laboratory and are well understood and are included in models. The exact results from their effects on the real world are far from completely understood.

Human activity releases about 7 billion tons of carbon into the air each year. The United States is responsible for about 24% of this, so about 1.68 billion tons, which combines with oxygen to make about 6.17 billion tons of CO2.

Not all the carbon produced by burning fossil fuels stays in the atmosphere some is absorbed by plants, rocks and oceans. Human activity traps some carbon each year in landfills and so forth, but not a great deal compared to natural processes. Septic tanks and sewage plants generally don't trap carbon indefinitely and less than half the dry weight of a corpse is carbon.

Since most carbon dioxide resulting from human activity is released directly into the air from burning fossil fuels, trapping waste is not enough for humanity to become carbon neutral, but it could be part of the solution. It has been suggested that carbon could be trapped by dumping straw or logs in oceans in locations where it will sink and get covered in sediment. It has also been suggested that iron could be added to the southern ocean to encourage the growth of photoplankton and trap carbon that way. However, both these options appear more expensive than reducing fossil fuel use.

D. None of the above. (please tell me what you think the debate is over)

The scientific debate is over just how much effect human activity is having, not whether it is significant.

Clouds are not gases. They are suspended liquid droplets.
Sequestration of CO2, in the form of dry ice, is a common theme in modern science fiction.

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

So it is better to bury or compost waste than to burn it? (as in bonfires.) If I resurrect my kitchen compost instead of throwing it all in the trash, will I be helping?

Is it better to grow grass than trees? (which absorbs more C02?) Is it better not to mow your lawn? (I bet the answer is yes. I hear gas mowers are big polluters).

Is burning leaves a no-no?

I wish I could get simple guides about what simple activities we should change. (beyond the obvious, like driving less...if only that were possible!!)

__________________
"I am happy to report that once again the universe is doing just great, thank you, purring with perfection, ever-changing same as always. Light is still cruising along at 186,000 miles per second, and the expanding universe shows no signs of contracting. At this rate, it won't be long before they'll have to let the photon belt out another notch."
Swami Beyondananda's 2007 State of the Universe address

I would imagine that using your kitchen waste as compost is far better than letting it go to a landfill.

It would be better to grow trees. Grass dosent have much mass and rots fairly easy, while logs tend to stick around a while

Burning leaves is essentially returning the bulk of the carbon in the plant material straight back into the atmosphere.

I think you are right about the guide too. It certainly couldnt hurt to get more info out to help reduce the small completely unnecesary additions of CO2 to the atmosphere

An excellent site on greenhouse gases is

http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_3_1.htm

Despite what some political activists would have you believe, there is still no scientific consensus on the nature and extent of climate change. Much more study and data is required.

http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm

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The Heavens Declare the Glory of Mathematics

I don't know about "better", but it sure is more convenient (if you can get away with it). I live on four acres of "mostly woodland" - three acres of live oak woods with a one acre strip of "used to be pasture" down the middle. I can proudly say that I have not mowed the grass once in the seven years I've lived here!

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

We do have technology now that allows the use of fossil fuels that will not disrupt the carbon cycle. It's best use is motor oil with the technology, but its a start. What I've heard of is private companies take animal wastes and do something that replicates the effects of the heat and pressure needed to make the fuel.

What about hydrogen fuel?
I have an issue of Scientific American which promises pie-in-the-sky for this. Is it too good to be true?

__________________
"I am happy to report that once again the universe is doing just great, thank you, purring with perfection, ever-changing same as always. Light is still cruising along at 186,000 miles per second, and the expanding universe shows no signs of contracting. At this rate, it won't be long before they'll have to let the photon belt out another notch."
Swami Beyondananda's 2007 State of the Universe address

Hydrogen is a great idea - in theory you could make it from water and when you burn it, you just get water back. But the very big problem, in my opinion, is how to make it.

Currently, most of the hydrogen available is actually made from fossil fuels, usually as a byproduct of the petrochemical industry. But this would be a pointless way to make it if you are trying to decrease the use of fossil fuels or help global warming; you would do better by just burning the coal or oil (as far as total energy out).

One way to make this work would be by making it via a photoelectrochemical process (I actually did research on this in the 80s). Unfortunately, no one has come up with a method with an efficiency even close to commercially viable.

The other way would be thermal-nuclear: using the heat from a nuclear power plant to split the water thermally. I have not seen any particular moves in that direction, at least on a commercial scale.

So, again IMHO, all the work on both hydrogen storage and hydrogen fuel cells (which is how you would "burn" the hyrogen) are putting the cart far in front of the horse.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Hi,
I should think that the more topsoil we can produce ie "Loam" the better.
Too much of this runs off turning into silt. The more we have, the better to
keep things green, and thus hold back the land. And it does sequester carbon in the process. Sounds like a win-win all around.
By the way: if you have a compost pile, give it a can of beer...even cheap beer. Compost likes beer on occasion. And it likes air as well. Dan

It would be faster and cheaper to investigate compressed air to run our cars.
In fact, it is being worked on now in Europe. The future can't wait.
Dan

But you still have to expend energy to compress the air. How are you going to do that - burn oil to make electricity? That might be more efficient than just burning the oil in your car, but I'm not sure of that.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Swift is correct. You can not trade one point of energy use for another that still envolves conventional methodolgies. A new source of non polluting energy needs to be developed. Also, whatever happens in North America is going to be offset by the Asian economies.

The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) had a kilometer of ice on my farm and it has been warming up ever since then, except for the Little Ice Age in the late 1700's.

One thing we might want to think about: paper recycling, yes or no?

Bear in mind paper is effectively frozen CO2, removed directly from the atmosphere using solar energy.

Recycling requires burning fossil fuels to collect and process it all.

Better to bury it and make new paper?

Or cut trees down in Canada and dump them in the profusion of lakes they have there. They will sink and the cold water and sediment will trap the carbon for many hundreds of years. (Provided temperature rises don't get silly.) Or cut trees down anywhere and dump them in rivers so they get deposited in aluvial fans on continental shelves. Hay will do too. Or burn wood or hay for electrical energy and a few percent of the carbon will be trapped as ash which can be piled up into artifical hills or whatever you like and serve as another means of trapping carbon. (This would probably be more cost effective than just dumping wood or hay in water.)

Don't forget all the plastic, polycarbonates, and tires that we are burying that will take thousands, if not millions of years, to decompose.

I dunno. Some plastics do last a long time, but I have plastics decay on me all the time and rubber tends to slowly perish too. Perhaps it's just the enviroment here. It can be a little harsh at times.

If you have asphalt shingles and vinyl windows on your abode, you have locked up many hundred pounds of carbon.

That would be right, but unfortunately the average person here is responsible from quite a few tons of carbon emmitted into the atmosphere per year. I think additions to housing stock will only trap a tiny portion of carbon released. But every little bit helps.

If we ignore normal biological processes, that would leave transportation, keeping warm/cool, and production of useful but not necessarily crucial items made from organic substances; and we should give up....what? Every item that man produces locks some carbon up to one degree or another. We quell forest fires as best we can and preserve the wood in the form of useful things. We lay asphalt roads at a prodigious rate. We paint everything. It is hard to find things in the room you are sitting in that does not contain carbon, my wife's jewelry being a notable exception. Now, it is the production of these things that causes the emmissions into the atmosphere; and how to calculate the pounds locked up versus pounds emitted, I think, would be challenging, but I bet (which means that I do not know), we lock up more than we emit.

I don't disagree. But it strikes me as somewhat ironic that only a couple of decades ago we were wanting to conserve all the trees because of deforestation, and here we sit discussing the pros and cons of sacrificing trees just to tie up their carbon.

But all else aside, I want a solution, and one that works. If that means sinking trees, so be it. I still maintain that if we had legislation in place that forced us out of fossil fuels, we would get there faster than any other country on the planet. Look how fast we made it to the moon. All we need is a really good reason to go ahead and bite the bullet. Back then, it was fear of the Russians beating us to it. Nowadays, well. . . . pick a reason. There are tons and tons of reasons why we should abandon fossil fuels. Unfortunately, it looks like most of these reasons are not compelling enough, which is why I advocate legislation. Normally I hate the government. But I want a solution for any kids I might have.

I doubt it.

Consider a simple plastic toy: the little thing with a pole in the middle, it rocks back and forth, and you stack graduated sizes of plastic rings on it? I used to make those in a factory.

That plastic starts out as a cold pellet, about the size of a BB. It is melted, using electicity, at a temp of hundreds of degrees. Part of the object that actually does the melting is a huge cone of solid metal (The extruder 'nozzle'.) It is so thick and solid that it has to heat up for about a day before it can be used. During this time it is simply consuming electrical energy -- buttloads of it -- with no output of melted plastic.

When this part is ready, more electrically-powered machines convey the plastic BB's through a series of pneumatic pipes (and energy was also required to compress that air) to the individual presses, where they are heated, mixed with color in another machine, then added to the press itself. A tube of hollow plastic (think of it as a sock) drops from the extruder and then the press closes around it. Air is injected so the 'sock' expands to the shape of the mold. Cold water (read: cooled using electric power) is cycled through the mold to cool down the portion of the plastic that will become your part; the rest is usually left hot so that it is easier to separate.

These presses are hydraulic. The fluid gets hot and sometimes it too needs to be cooled. It takes anywhere from about thirty seconds to several minutes to form a part in the mold, depending on what exactly it is, its particular type of plastic (HDPE, HPE, etc), and on and on. . . .

The net result is that there is no way we locked up more carbon in that little toy than we consumed (in energy) during its production. Plus, that plastic pellet we melted used to be crude oil. How much energy went onto creating the pellets? Another one to consider -- the amount of energy used by an automobile factory: very little carbon is being locked up in metal parts, yet vast amounts of energy are used to form and assemble them.

I agree, to a point, and in my prior post I said:

"Now, it is the production of these things that causes the emissions into the atmosphere."

The energy used has to be allocated to the entire production run of course, not just one toy. However, I was particularily pointing out the amount of wood products that we all have and are preserving in homes. Also, the cars contain substantial amounts of plastic and the production of those parts,through technology, has become very efficient; i.e. lower cost, and we produce more pounds of plastic than we use pounds of fuel in their production; neither of which is all carbon of course. If it was one for one we wouldn't be able to afford anything.

Now my ultimate concern is that as we lock up the carbon in the plastic and fail to develop a new non-polluting energy source, that at some point we will start burning the plastic to provide energy.

I only addressed the issues that come into play in regard to producing one toy to keep it simple. A whole production run does not mean that less energy is used; it requires a finite amount of energy to melt the plastic; making more doesn't lower the melting point of the plastic. Efficiency, in this sense, applies only to the levels of production, not the overall energy consumed. In other words, increased production does not necessarily correlate to increased energy efficiency -- and it might mean you use more.

In addition, in order for that object to get into your house, it has to be transported to a store, and you have to drive somewhere to buy it. That amount of fuel alone probably uses up more carbon than is stored within the things that were transported. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the amount of carbon locked inside of a semi-truck carrying a load of tree trunks is far less than the carbon released in to the atmosphere while that wood is being transported to the paper mill.

As far as not being able to afford anything: you have to remember that energy is very very cheap; it is the low cost of energy that keeps prices for our products low.

And yes, cars contain much more plastic than metal, but the same things that apply to the production of the toy apply to the plastic parts in cars. And yes, we are very efficient at producing these parts. . . but efficiency in production often comes at a sacrifice in energy costs. I just don't see how we could be sequestering carbon just by producing things, that is, not with our current energy sources.

As far as your last sentence goes, I too have thought of that, and it really really scares me. It would be a disaster if all of the carbon currently locked up in consumer goods were suddenly released at once.

We are and have been "sequestering" a percentage of the carbon consumption. Not that that is a solution. Recycling plastics does cut down the energy use for production and re-locks the carbon.

I don't think we have to worry about it being released all at once. Unless we get hit with a big enough chunk of space rock to set the whole planet on fire, and then we would have other problems. But, it is not beyond my concept of human folly for things to get bad enough due to inaction to have to burn the house to keep warm (metaphorically speaking). Elsewhere I have stated my solution/advocacy to the problem of a new non-polluting energy source and will only say here that just because it is hard and long term does not mean we should ignore the quest. There just is not a immediate solution to grant instant gratification.

You just hit the nail on the head with your remark about instant gratification. That could be the root cause of a lot of the difficulties in getting anything done. Some people just want it done now.

Hi, You would be amazed at the amount of energy you can muster using wind power to make compressed air. It is mechanically a simpler interface.
We were raised to believe in electricity. But......there ARE other interfaces.
Once you inderstand that, you begin to think outside the box.
Did I mention steam? You get a substantial boost of energy on the condensate side
for free from cold water( winter).
Imagine storing high pressure air in a hole drilled into the rock and sleeved with a silicone tube. Once you have your bank, you start charging it. Draw it down when you need it. And it does not pollute.
Every bit of energy you make on your own soil is money that stays on our shore, and jobs for Your own country.
Google...."Cars that run on compressed air". May you find it interesting.
Best regards, Dan