----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Addison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 07:29
Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Kyoto- nothing but a buch of crap/junk science
I am keeping the perspective, the carbon was around in one form or another
for that entire time.
>
> In one form or another yes, but which form, and for how long?
>
That is a big part of the issue as far as I can tell. Does anyone realy
know? I'm not sure.
I think Bob Allen was clear enough about it.
> Greg, the carbon released from the combustion of fossil
> fuels accumulated for 10s or even 100s of millions of years.
> We are releasing it over a matter of a couple of
> centuries. The variations you speak of in carbon
> sequestration/release rates occur over a matter of decades.
> there is a big, big difference. Like 6 or 7 orders of
> magnitude. Let's keep our carbon budgets in perspective
> here.
Right.
> >But now your talking sequestering,
>
> Storing - ie, out of action.
>
> >not plants decomposing,
>
> Carbon circulating - ie carbon neutral.
>
Agreed.
And the distinction between the two is clear.
> >
> >Am I saying that we should continue on as we have? No. What I am
> >saying is that we barely have a firm grasp on the hear and now, to say
with
> >any total assurance that A+B=D, and if D happens then F will result 150
> >years after the onset of D, and H will occur 500 years after F.
>
> It's kind of hard to distinguish much or any difference between what
> you're saying and not saying. Is this what you're saying/not saying?
> We shouldn't continue as we have been, but we shouldn't do anything
> else either because:
>
> >Too many variables.
>
> So there's no way of knowing the right thing to do.
I believe that in this case Keith, I am having a hard time passing on, what
I'm trying to say on through the inefficant medium of e-mail and lack of
vocabulary, but, I will try and clarify things.
I personaly am not 100% sure, that CO2 and other green house gasses are the
cause of global warming,
The case for it being the main cause is extremely strong and grows
stronger by the day.
in fact that I am totaly 100% certian about global
warming, because I perceve ( correcly or incorrectly ) varables, that I
don't know have been accounted for.
So does everybody else. And what this reduces to is an argument
between risk assessment and the Precautionary Principle. If you're
going to go for risk assessment - ie, no action until we know for
sure - then there'll be a parting of the ways between you and me.
I am not saying that I am a better
person, amd know more, than the scientest that support the theory of global
warming. I just have lingering doubts, because I know the mistakes that
science makes, and after all the science of global warming is what, 10-15 or
so years old?
Somewhat older than that, and it draws on previous work that is much
older than that.
OTOH, I am sure, that there is currently a disturbing
trend, that needs to be delt with, be it short term or long term.
Dealt with how?
> >As simple humans we can only look back a few thousand years or so, and
say
> >what has happened with any great degree of certainty. Beyond that we
only
> >have educated guesses to work with, and the farther we look back, the
> >greater amount of error that is possible, of guessing wrong. As for
> >looking to the future, we still can't predict the weather a month from
now
> >with anything more than a guess, and again the farther we try and look,
and
> >say doing this action will cause that effect - the greater the chances of
> >being wrong ( anybody that says other wise ought to be playing the
lottery
> >and winning regularly ).
>
> Please don't confuse climate with weather!
I don't think I am,
You are, in using your view that "we still can't predict the
*weather* a month from now with anything more than a guess" to
indicate the folly of taking steps to remediate behaviour which is
sending the *climate* veering out of control.
but, I don't think that climate and weather are seprate
either.
Of course they're not separate, they're interdependent, but they're
not the same thing.
A few years of odd weather can change the local climate, for good
or for bad. The local climate where I live, has become drier, since I
first moved here almost 20 yrs ago, and the weather has changed as well.
Has the weather changed because the climate did or has the climate changed
because of a disruption in the weather? I couldn't say, and I have talked
to a local meterologest, and he couldn't say either.
So the egg came first or was it the chicken, but what's it matter if
there's a disease spreading that's about to wipe out all chickens and
us with it?
> >Man sequesters tons of carbon every year, in forms that will last for a
long
> >time. If man was to sequester all the carbon that he has released in
the
> >last 2000+ yrs, the world would be turned on it's ear and we will have
even
> >more problems.
>
> How so?
"How so" what? The comment about man sequestering carbon, release of
carbon for 2000+ years, or about the world being turned on it's ear?
How so will the world be turned on its ear and we'll have even more
problems by sequestering carbon?
> First, make it 200 years, as it's only in that period that
> man has released carbon into the atmosphere that was previously out
> of circulation - fossil-fuel carbon, "new" carbon as far as the
> atmosphere is concerned - excess carbon. As you point out, something
> happening over 200 years is a very sudden event. The atmosphere and
> the climate have not adapted to this excess other than by taking
> damage. How would removing it turn the world on its ear? "Our" world
> perhaps, with our profligate habits, but *the* world?
>
Ok, you say 200 years. I was using 2000+ years, because, I have been told
that coal was known and used to one extent or another, since before the
Roman empire, not extensively until 200 or so years ago, when man started
realy putting fossil fuels to work.
The biosphere is able to take a certain amount of abuse, even rather
a large amount. 200 years ago it started to become a downright
unreasonable amount as far as carbon is concerned, and it's since
become an unsustainable amount. By comparison, and in effect, the
traces of 2,000 years ago are hardly significant. Similarly, 2,000
years ago man was dumping the then-equivalent of sewage in the oceans
without any or much effect, now we do essentially the same thing but
grotesquely amplified and we have dead zones all over the place.
I believe that it will turn the world on it's ear. Jet travel would
almost cease, or become a thing for the rich ( that could afford to have an
equel amout of carbon squestered ), the cost of use of mudane things like
concreat, computers, steel, comunications, ( such as TV's, radios,
satalights and other forms other than face to face ), farming ( other than
biological forms of power - to include biodiesel ), even the transfer of
food from agrculture areas to cities would skyrocket - if we went to a world
wide carbon neutral style of living.
I'm not sure what you're talking about Greg. Sequestering all the
excess carbon we've emitted in 2,000 or 200 years, returning to 1990
levels as proposed, and going to a worldwide carbon neutral style of
living are three different things.
Could cities the size on Tokyo, Paris, London, or New York and there current
population exist in a carbon neutral society? I personaly don't think so.
Yes, though not without changes. Very many of the world's largest
cities would neither be able to feed themselves nor to cope with
their waste production problems were it not for city farms. Yet
governments and authorities tend to harrass city farmers. In New York
the authorities harrass city farmers in various ways. The changes
required seem to be happening anyway, for a variety of reasons, and
in spite of official apathy/antipathy. Now there's a surprise! LOL!
When we lived in Tokyo and in Osaka there were farms all round us.
Our neighbours were farms. Japanese cities are interpenetrated by
farms, rice farms, vegetable farms, all sorts of farms. Farming in
Japan is a whole other subject, but if those farms were turned to
producing local food for local consumption, as city farms are, and
promoted instead of being largely ignored, with what's by learnt
elsewhere about city farms incorporated, along with other initiatives
taken (think "Dig for Victory!"), and the city thoroughly greened, I
believe Tokyo could manage pretty well.
http://journeytoforever.org/cityfarm.html
City farms
http://journeytoforever.org/cityfarm_link.html
Resources for city farms
> Sequestering the fossil-fuel carbon we've released will increase
> global temperatures? Again, how so?
I didn't say it would increase global tempatures.
This is what you said: "Man sequesters tons of carbon every year, in
forms that will last for a long time. If man was to sequester all
the carbon that he has released in the last 2000+ yrs, the world
would be turned on it's ear and we will have even more problems.
We may as well stop using computers and go back to the horse and
buggy - and more than from hurricanes, spawned by the increase in
global temperature."
It's somewhat confused. Okay, never mind.
I was talking about the
current evelated tempatures from unsequestered carbon.
>
> >Man has exceed the biological holding capacity of the world,
>
> Not so. Go and study the eco-footprinting sites. You'll see that it's
> only the OECD countries that have such enormous feet. Most countries
> fit their resources with room to spare.
>
> "The worldwide average per capita footprint is 2.4 hectares, or 6
> acres... About 80% of humanity's total eco-footprint is taken up by
> 97.5% of the population. The other 20% of the global human
> eco-footprint is taken by only 2.5% of the world population. These
> are the few who have far too much. Without them, the overshoot would
> go back to zero -- we'd still be sustainable, though only just. The
> ecological footprint of the average American is 12 hectares, 30
> acres. The average Canadian needs one third less, and the average
> Italian 55% less." [more]
> http://journeytoforever.org/edu_footprint.html
> Eco-footprint: Journey to Forever
>
There is a world of differance between biological capitity and ecological
footprint.
Indeed there is, yet when dealing with it on the macro-level, as you
are: "Man has exceed the biological holding capacity of the world",
eco-footprinting shows it's not the case, and also shows where the
real problem lies.
<snip>
If we want to continue to fight
> >world hunger, give hurricane warnings, and other good things that the use
of
> >fossil fuels have brought to life, the best we can hope for is a slowed
rate
> >increase in atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gasses.
>
> Do you really believe that the fight against world hunger depends on
> the use of fossil-fuels? It's much easier to make the exact opposite
> case. It's fossil-fuels that have underpinned the economic practices
> that have led to the marginalisation of so many. Wherever you see
> "wealth creation" it's usually a lot safer to read wealth extraction
> and concentration, with poverty creation the result. Hence the
> so-called Green Revolution, based on so-called HYVs, high-yielding
> varieties (actually high-response varieties bred for their response
> to fossil-fuel based chemical fertilizer inputs), and usually
> mechanization, where grain production and the numbers of the hungry
> increased hand in hand. There was always a minimum size of farm that
> got assisted, with the small farms left out, though everywhere small
> farms have been shown to be the more productive. So the rich got
> richer, the poor were devastated, a typical case. Now, though similar
> programs continue, a typical case of a different sort is that
> millions upon millions of small farmers in poor countries and 3rd
> World countries are turning to sustainable methods which do not rely
> on fossil fuel inputs. This is the kind of development that really
> does put food in hungry people's mouths, as opposed to aid (mostly
> tied to the donor country's interests) and programs such as the
> "Green Revolution", few of which stand up beyond the national data
> showing increased calories per capita, which mask the growing poverty
> figures. It's the same everywhere, with so-called "free" trade vs
> fair trade, for another instance. It's a quite different story if you
> remove fossil-fuels from the picture. Too often fossil-fuels means
> top-down, centralised, corporatist practices that are inimical to
> local economies and the poor. Most of the so-called benefits of
> fossil-fuel-based economics go to "the few who have far too much" -
> it's just waste, and the costs are horrendous, whether in human terms
> or environmental.
Of this I have no doubt. It is better to teach a man how to fish, than to
give him a fish, but, once a man is tauch how to fish, how many men will be
contented to fish, when fish are being handed out?
Many. What point are you making Greg? Are you arguing against global
warming now or the dreaded Welfare State? LOL!
Anyway, I don't like this line about fish and fishing, I'm always
seeing it and I think it misses the point quite often. Fishing is
hunter-gathering. Find an analogy that applies to husbandry.
As it has happened though out history, there are always those people that
would sit back and let others do the work while they do nothing in return,
and still expect to be fed.
You mean the rich and greedy? No you don't. How does this relate to
the end of fossil fuels equating to the end of the fight against
world hunger?
Keith
Greg H.
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