Can somebody tell me about carbon footprint?

CrustyRedXpress said:

...WE are now the stinky roommates...the rest of the world has committed to cleaning up it's act...and is making progress in doing so. 

Well....

CoalSwarm published a report on September 26 warning that 259 gigawatts of coal power capacity – equivalent to the entire coal power fleet of the United States – is being built in China despite government policies restricting new builds

https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/10761-China-is-building-coal-power-again/en

Like I mentioned, the realities of the world and how it operates.  Countries (let's be blunt... China), like people, are ultimately selfish in general .

Stop driving, don't buy imported goods, don't use the internet. Install solar or wind power generation on your residence. Those of the things that come to mind. Nothing wrong with trying to minimize our impact on the planet and live more efficient lives, but the biggest thing is realize that it is all a scam and don't worry about it. The world is not going to end in 12 years. The weather was more extreme and temperatures hotter in the 1930's than today. The alarmists are winning the PR battle, but don't be alarmed.

People fail at reducing their impact on the environment for the same reason they fail at loosing weight: They set unreasonable goals.

Best for the environment would be if you started biking to work, stopped using AC in your house, only bought second hand stuff and became vegan. But... you are probably going to ditch that lifestyle in less then a week.

I would suggest:

- Reduce your red meat consumption. Poultry and fish has much lower foot print then beef. Maybe sort your week into a fish day, a vego days, 2 chicken days and 3 "open" days?

- Be mindful of pointless single use items, like Styrofoam cups and plates, straws and plastic cutlery. This is my favorite, because it is just a matter of habit - you are not really giving anything up. If all did this, it would have a gigantic impact. If you are a toddler, super-old or a Parkinson patient, you need a lid and a straw for your drink when you sit down at a table at a restaurant. But the average adult doesn't. Again: You don't need to stop going to the rib shack you like just because they have plastic knifes and forks. But your meal will be the same without the lid and a straw. Bring a couple of old mugs to work and skip the Styrofoam coffee cups.

- Think one more time before you buy cheap, pointless gifts and toys. I've read that 75% of all Christmas gifts are used less then 1 hour in total. Do the kids really need one more cheap plastic toy? Do you really need to buy some pointless crap for that aunt you (honestly) despise, just because you celebrate Xmas together? We buy UNICEF and Red Cross donations for pretty much all adults at Xmas and birthdays now. Only young kids get actual gifts from us.

If you do this, you've done more then most, while sacrificing quite little in your life. Make it a long term habit. Tell your friends.

When mother earth is done with us, she'll kill us.

My big thing is not even renewable energy, it's just a frustration at the insane levels of stupidity involved with digging up carbon from a mile below the surface and dumping it in the biosphere.  I think about the warehouses of rotting government subsidized crops that could be alcohol.  I recall reading several books about biofuels several years ago, and it was estimated that if we converted all of our surplus crops into biofuels it would supply about 18% of our consumption.  I recall reading one of those books as a passenger in a car stuck in traffic on the 405 in LA surrounded by individual people in monster SUVs.

I wish we weren't such gluttons or biofuels would actually be a sustainable solution.

Its kind of interesting to note the suggestions to ignore global warming.  

Which wasn't the question.  Not even close.  Realistic ways to reduce someone's carbon footprint was the question.

In reply to MadScientistMatt :

Yea, I did mean produce that actually grows locally without extra effort.

Like getting tomatos is seasonal.  Or peaches.  Or apples.

On the other hand- if it takes less energy to get winter tomoatoes in Minnesota vs. the energy to move tomatoes from California to Minnesota, well...   But that math matters.

But on a less-ranty note, there is a growing movement toward not recycling.  I don't mean throwing your plastic in the trash, I mean replacing things like rubbermaids or ziplocs with glass kitchen containers.  Using microfiber cloths for dishes instead of disposable sponges.  Converting to LED lights that last for 15 years instead of incandescent or chemical-laden CFLs.  Composting instead of landfill.  Solar panels instead of all-grid electric.  Get a burn barrel or make an outdoor fire pit to burn paper.  It's going to give up its carbon sooner or later; either in a landfill over 10 years or in a fire pit over 10 minutes.

I realize that I live alone, but I'm pretty proud of the fact that I only have about 1 trash bag every two weeks.  I have started buying my beer and liquor from small, local distilleries and brewers and using my refillable containers.

I haven't seen any hard numbers, but it's surprising how much of what we put in a recycling bin just ends up in a landfill anyway.  

One of the problems is that the "process" is in place.  We've become so accustomed to going to the supermarket in Ohio and buying fresh Tomatoes in February without realizing that they're grown in Ruskin FL and put on a 6mpg 18 wheeler, 15% of the crop is damaged in transport, and the scale of the operation means that large, fossil-fuel equipment is used to plant and harvest it.  I don't need fresh tomatoes in February.  It is nice, but it is a luxury.  Instead, I'll buy a half bushel from a local farmer's market in July and freeze or can them.  The problem with the process is that A) unless you get a critical mass of people to stop buying tomatoes in February, we aren't going to magically stop the machine, and B) our society is so accustomed to being able to have busy lives that it will be hard to shift.  The urban doctor who works 20 hour shifts doesn't have the time or space to plant his or her own tomatoes..

CrustyRedXpress said:

After pulling out of the Paris Climate accord it's important to realize that WE are now the stinky roommates...the rest of the world has committed to cleaning up it's act...and is making progress in doing so. 

The rest of the world is also in a different situation and has different types of motivation than the US for cleaning up their act. 

The US is now a net exporter of oil. That has placed them among a very limited group of nations that can independently support itself. In addition to having the largest economy, the US now has enough fuel to provide energy and enough fertile ground to feed its people. That unique combination gives them political leverage when negotiating with other countries. They no longer have to trade to survive the same way that almost every other nation does. That's incredibly valuable to a government. That means that other countries must find alternative ways to seek energy independence to regain some negotiating power, so There's a geo-political motivation for other countries to adopt a lot of this tech wholesale.

Many of these other nations have also had more lax environmental regulations than the US for a very long time. That basically means that they've got more clean up to do, and there's still some "low hanging fruit", that can be fixed cheaper and easier (and have more impact) than continuing to advance US regulations even further. The levels of government support (financing) are very different as well. 

Im not at all saying that we shouldn't try to do what we can to reduce our environmental impact. I think that it's extremely beneficial on an individual level, and could be on a national level too. But there's more going on with the various governments pushing alternative energy and the like than just trying to mitigate environmental impacts. It's more complex than simply saying that other countries care more about the environment than the US, because the US backed out of an international agreement.

There isn't an awful lot of new ideas to reduce your carbon footprint.  Anything you can do to buy less, be colder in the winter, hotter in the summer, and never venture over the horizon, the better you are. Stop berkeleying.

Will it make a difference?  Not a bit, as long as there are 7,999,999,999 other people not doing the same thing.  The focus right now is on preventing further damage, which I think is beyond our abilities, so we need to focus on reacting.  Let Venice sink, and rent scuba gear to tourists.  Stop issuing building permits in New Orleans and make all the roads one way out of town.  Drop a nuke in an important part of the San Andreas fault, and slide Los Angeles into the Pacific.  Start developing summer resorts in Northern Saskatchewan, so the Arizona Sunbirds can come north in the summer.

The above is tongue in cheek, kinda, but there's a whole world of extenuating circumstances that will conspire to prevent us from fixing the damage.  Some will be human nature, some will be simple math.  Canada has a fairly low total contribution to global warming on a chart based on area, but its very high on the per capita basis.  That is because its berkeleying cold up here for half the year.  Do we close up our houses in October and start walking south, then back north in April to tend our crops?  Should we just bulldoze the entire country into the oceans and move to Nebraska?

Anyway, I drive smaller vehicles, my A/C in the house broke several years ago, and I haven't fixed it, I put on a sweater when I'm chilly, I buy most of my veg from the farmer in the valley all summer, and my race cars all have fuel injection. 

I can only control myself. I have no interest in trying to control anyone else. Hell I can't even get the other humans that live in my house on board. But I've been really trying to minimize my impact as much as possible. I've switched to bicycle for 95% of my travel throughout the week. Well until my knees gave out recently but I've got an MRI scheduled for Thursday and am hoping they can get me back on the bike this spring. 

I've still got a lot of other areas that I can make improvements in. But I'm chipping away at it. And those little improvements add up over time. I don't stress out about it but I do make conscious decisions. I'm not scared and I don't watch the news. Ideally I'd like to minimize my life to the point that I could live out of a backpack. But with a wife and a kid that is not realistic.

It's reduce, reuse, recycle, in that order.

A lot of people get tied up about whether local products are better than Argentinian, or whether recycling is beneficial, or which new car has the lowest carbon impact, but all of that is missing the point.

Reduce! (That is the point about saving money too)

The biggest impact you can have is to stop consuming the junk you don't need. This is not easy, but it is hundreds of times more effective than consuming the "greenest" junk.

MadScientistMatt said:

Locally grown food is well and good if it's something that grows well locally. There are some cases where trying to grow something locally can cost more in energy than growing it in a place with appropriate temperature and rainfall.

Marijuana is a great example of this.  The vast majority of it is grown indoors and costs a lot of carbon - both from an energy usage standpoint, and it requires more nutrients as well as supporting equipment, all which takes carbon to create/maintain.

Robbie said:

It's reduce, reuse, recycle, in that order.

A lot of people get tied up about whether local products are better than Argentinian, or whether recycling is beneficial, or which new car has the lowest carbon impact, but all of that is missing the point.

Reduce! (That is the point about saving money too)

The biggest impact you can have is to stop consuming the junk you don't need. This is not easy, but it is hundreds of times more effective than consuming the "greenest" junk.

This.  

Also, most people seem to overlook the 'reuse' step.  That doesn't just mean wash out your salsa jar** and refill it.  It means buy someone else's stuff they no longer need instead of buying absolute garbage on Amazon.  Craigslist, consignment shops, goodwill, etc.

Of course, that part is easier said than done.  It takes a tremendous amount of time to find things used vs. buying a new product.  But if you want to reduce your footprint (as well as landfill usage), its a fantastic way of doing so.

** obviously if you are truly concerned about carbon footprint, you wouldn't be buying salsa anyway, you'd just make it from veggies you pick up at the local farmers market.  But I needed an example and that was the first thing that popped in my head.

ProDarwin said:

MadScientistMatt said:

Locally grown food is well and good if it's something that grows well locally. There are some cases where trying to grow something locally can cost more in energy than growing it in a place with appropriate temperature and rainfall.

Marijuana is a great example of this.  The vast majority of it is grown indoors and costs a lot of carbon - both from an energy usage standpoint, and it requires more nutrients as well as supporting equipment, all which takes carbon to create/maintain.

 

 

I read an article in the economist probably 12-15 years ago now that outlined a study of beef in London. They found that it is actually greener to grow the cows in New Zealand and ship the meat to downtown London (refrudgeration and everything) where people walk to the store to buy it than it is for the same number of consumers to independently drive 15 minutes each to the local farm to buy the same meat.

But again, this is missing the point. If they cut the meat consumption by 10% that would be a much greater savings than either logistical option.

Robbie said:

I read an article in the economist probably 12-15 years ago now that outlined a study of beef in London. They found that it is actually greener to grow the cows in New Zealand and ship the meat to downtown London (refrudgeration and everything) where people walk to the store to buy it than it is for the same number of consumers to independently drive 15 minutes each to the local farm to buy the same meat.

But again, this is missing the point. If they cut the meat consumption by 10% that would be a much greater savings than either logistical option.

That doesn't surprise me.  Now what if the 'local farm' just shipped their meat to the local stores?

I heard some news clip on NPR around xmas that shopping online was less efficient from an energy usage standpoint that just going out shopping at the mall/target.  I found this nearly impossible to believe but I would like to see numbers to back it up.  I'm absolutely sure that shopping online is worse for landfills though :(

Canada absorbs far more carbon than we emit with our vast boreal forests, and yet we are still told we will need to literally destroy our economy to save the world. It makes very little sense to me. I will continue to recycle, and limit my footprint in small sensible ways like reducing and reusing, but it sure bugs me watching our climate disciple David Suzuki jetting around the world, chartering helicopters to attend protests and then telling the rest of us how much damage we are doing. 

ProDarwin said:

MadScientistMatt said:

Locally grown food is well and good if it's something that grows well locally. There are some cases where trying to grow something locally can cost more in energy than growing it in a place with appropriate temperature and rainfall.

Marijuana is a great example of this.  The vast majority of it is grown indoors and costs a lot of carbon - both from an energy usage standpoint, and it requires more nutrients as well as supporting equipment, all which takes carbon to create/maintain.

 

 

On the flip side of that, industrial hemp is a fantastic crop for reducing an areas overall carbon footprint. From the good it does rejuvenating soil, to pulling more CO2 from the air per acre than forest, as well as being capable of producing more paper per acre than forests. It's stronger than most synthetic cordage, requires no fertilizer, and crops can be turned over several times per year. 

Don't believe me? Let's not forget about help for victory!

A industrial hemp revolution here and abroad could really do wonders to the supply chain the world over, turning farmland people are paid not to work or that can't be worked due to nutrient burnouts into thriving, CO2 sucking, forest saving green zones. 

bearmtnmartin said:

Canada absorbs far more carbon than we emit with our vast boreal forests, and yet we are still told we will need to literally destroy our economy to save the world. It makes very little sense to me. I will continue to recycle, and limit my footprint in small sensible ways like reducing and reusing, but it sure bugs me watching our climate disciple David Suzuki jetting around the world, chartering helicopters to attend protests and then telling the rest of us how much damage we are doing. 

This.

"I'll start acting like it's a crisis when the people who are telling me it's a crisis, start acting like it's a crisis".

Our provincial government's "carbon tax" is absolutely nothing to change people's behaviour and the government is just using it as a cash cow.

You guys have got me beat. Quite a few days I forget to say the Our Father in the morning. I've only now forced myself to relearn the Hail Mary. I just don't have enough faith for the environment. 

In defense of those preaching about saving the environment... its pretty hard to do so without having a negative carbon impact.  Its kind of a lose/lose scenario.

It is shortsighted to do nothing about it.  So many of the fairly huge improvements are low hanging fruit and benefit the environment and society in ways beyond carbon footprint alone.  Everyone likes to think they aren't part of the problem, but they are.  And if they live in North America, they are much bigger part of the problem.

RevRico said:

On the flip side of that, industrial hemp is a fantastic crop for reducing an areas overall carbon footprint. From the good it does rejuvenating soil, to pulling more CO2 from the air per acre than forest, as well as being capable of producing more paper per acre than forests. It's stronger than most synthetic cordage, requires no fertilizer, and crops can be turned over several times per year. 

Plants don't continuously pull carbon from the air unless they are growing.  The amount they pull is related to size & speed of growth.  I.E. old growth stuff doesn't use a lot of carbon at all.  When they die, the release all the carbon again.  Plants are temporary carbon storage.  

So it isn't like planting a bunch of trees or weed will offset a continuous carbon usage.  This applies to the Canada argument above as well.

Also RE: Canada, you guys are pretty damn close to the US in terms of carbon output per capita and per GDP.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

Ibtl

bearmtnmartin said:

Canada absorbs far more carbon than we emit with our vast boreal forests, and yet we are still told we will need to literally destroy our economy to save the world. It makes very little sense to me. I will continue to recycle, and limit my footprint in small sensible ways like reducing and reusing, but it sure bugs me watching our climate disciple David Suzuki jetting around the world, chartering helicopters to attend protests and then telling the rest of us how much damage we are doing. 

That's not actually true. "Managed forests" do absorb more than they emit, but overall Canada's forests actually emit more than they absorb due to forest fires, trees rotting and so on. A mature forest also doesn't absorb nearly as much as a young forest. Logging, while temporarily disruptive and "ugly", helps reduce the risk of fires, sequester carbon and provides habitat for those plants and animals that need more open spaces. For every tree that is cut down, three are planted and the company is responsible for making sure that they survive (to a point). It also supplies well paying, sustainable jobs to regions where there might not be a lot of other employment. When it's opposed by "environmentalists" solely on principle of logging = bad, it's a case of them protesting against themselves (in a sense). That's not to say all logging is good, but done right, it's very beneficial. We should be encouraging wood based construction in place of steel and concrete, which are either much more disruptive to the environment and/or very carbon intense. Here in BC we have North America's tallest wood building (18 stories), so no, it's not just houses that can be wood, but much more. It also hits on the "buy local" principle for most, or at least much more local than steel.

Stop using keurigs. Not using single serve, stupid bullE36 M3 designed to be chucked into a landfill once you're done with it is the easiest way to reduce that crap.