Earth Day, the environment, and climate change.

[Kobuk]

It's Earth Day today. A time for people around the world to be more aware of and support environmental change to our planet.
So what are people's thoughts on various issues such as, but not limited to:

Climate change
Melting polar caps
CO2 emissions
Extreme weather conditions (Heat waves, droughts, floods, etc.)
Deforestation
Plastic littering the oceans.
 

[Jade Sinapu]

It's all real, and it's all happening now.

I believe hydrogen economy powered by solar, neuclear, wind, etc... is only way forward.

Co2 data has been taken for over 100 years. It's real data.

Polar ice data dates to 1000's of years and correlates.  I have seen the science myself first hand in 1999. Polar ice cores on display at the Denver Federal Center openhouse.  I was in a freezer at -30f talking to the scientists who drilled it.

Plastic in the ocean is real and bigger than Texas. 

Ozone hole is real too. And is only now healing because of the groundbreaking Montreal protocol.
If we hadn't made the Montreal protocol,  they say we would be in dire straights HERE not just the polar regions. So we dfoged a planetary sized bullet on that one.  There was a good documentary on PBS about the ozone hole just a few weeks ago.

[Varg the wanderer]

Climate change
Melting polar caps
CO2 emissions
Extreme weather conditions (Heat waves, droughts, floods, etc.)

The climate is always changing. I find it interesting that it's gone from "Global Cooling" to "Global Warming" to "Climate Change". Data is constantly being "corrected". Data isn't corrected. If you are getting bad readings you throw it out and take data somewhere else or in a different way.

There has been a steady increase in geological activity over the past few decades. This means that the tectonic plates are moving, which means that divergent boundaries on the ocean floor are opening up, exposing molten rock (and the rock around it will be very hot too). These boundaries are thousands of miles long, and ocean water is flowing over them. Anyone who has cone swimming in cool water knows that when the water moves it is very good at moving heat. Warmer oceans (which has been measured) mean more water evaporates. Water is a fantastic greenhouse gas, better than CO2, and so it makes sense that this would elevate the temperature more than any of the others. CO2 is the second largest contributor, but pales in comparison to water. While I believe our used of fossil fuels isn't helping anything I do not think it is the root cause. The poles are accelerating in their migration, so much so that we've had to update our declination charts years ahead of schedule. We've always assumed it took thousands of years, but they've moving 10x that fast and still accelerating, and the data we do have from the past few times (hundreds of thousands of yeas ago) is not very concrete. Regardless, this is a geological movement, indicating there is an increasing amount of activity despite if it's shown up on land yet or not.

Alternative energies still need to be explored and developed. We'll be running out before we're all dead at the rate we're going.

Deforestation

This needs to be dealt with ASAP.

Plastic littering the oceans.
 

This is a huge (literally) problem. Now they are finding these plastics in fish and other wildlife all around the pacific, and it won't be long before it's poisoning marine life around the world. How do we clean it up? That is an engineering feat in its self.

[Kobuk]

Bit of a sobering read.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/06/world/un-biodiversity-report-end-of-nature-sutter-scn/index.html

[Kobuk]

I guess the Trump Administration thinks it's ok to rob the Arctic of it's natural resources. 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/06/politics/pompeo-sea-ice-arctic-council/index.html

[FarFar]

All of these problems are very real and need to be addressed.

It is rather interesting that various studies show that the climate is "heating up", "cooling down", "heating up again", "cooling down again." No doubt, that the weather overall has taken a turn to being more erratic. I would think that CO2 emissions are playing havoc with the environment as well as other geological factors that are not being considered.

I would like to see something done about all of the plastic waste in the oceans. A huge engineering task to clean that all up, but I think it could be done if the desire is there.

[Varg the wanderer]

All of these problems are very real and need to be addressed.
I would like to see something done about all of the plastic waste in the oceans. A huge engineering task to clean that all up, but I think it could be done if the desire is there.

It won't be cheap. The ships that will be needed have to be maintained and fueled and the crews paid, and that's the little stuff. The resources to deal with it need to be found- the best would be if the plastic its self could become profitable- or at least used as a source of energy.

[FarFar]

All of these problems are very real and need to be addressed.
I would like to see something done about all of the plastic waste in the oceans. A huge engineering task to clean that all up, but I think it could be done if the desire is there.

It won't be cheap. The ships that will be needed have to be maintained and fueled and the crews paid, and that's the little stuff. The resources to deal with it need to be found- the best would be if the plastic its self could become profitable- or at least used as a source of energy.

The plastic itself could potentially be profitable if used as a source of energy. But to make it environmentally safe, the profit margins would most likely be reduced to zero. No win situation there.

[Jade Sinapu]

Can we cease non bio-degradable plastic production worldwide, and make all plastics break down in sea water after 1 year? etc...

Or maybe a solar powered floating, roving, Roomba type robot that collects the surface debris.  Bags the plastic in wire nets, and attaches floats to it.  with a GPS beacon. 
Crews come behind and collect nets of plastic and take to another floating facility that attempts to recycle it, or at least melt it into a solid block that can be sunk?

as for the plastics wastes that are in the water or have sunk... that's VERY hard indeed!

[Robert_Silvermyst]

Global warming, global cooling, climate change. Call it what you will, but I will call it what it is: Fear-mongering Politics. Does this mean I don't believe we are having an impact on the world? No. There are many things we can do to help clean up the world. But when politicians say that if we don't pass a nice-sounding bill that the world will end in 12 years, that's a horse and pony show we've seen in the past. According to them, the world should have ended five times by now. And if you look at any of the bills they try to pass, the bulk of what's in the bills have nothing at all to do with protecting the environment.

First, let's address carbon emissions. The US and most of the civilized world already have a great number of technologies to help reduce carbon emissions. Yet, no one is sanctioning China and India over their carbon emissions and pollution, the two nations who produce the most pollution out of any developed country in the world, far more than all other countries in the world combined. Taxing people here in the US more money for carbon isn't going to help lower emissions. But you know what does help? Planting trees. Trees breathe in carbon the same way we breathe in the oxygen trees produce. Not a single government-sponsored bill suggests that.

Next, energy sources. A lot of people will jump to solar and wind when it comes to that argument, ignoring how much oil and coal is used in making and maintaining them. On top of that, the energy produced is far less and nowhere near as effective or efficient. Cloudy days will shut down your solar grid, hail will destroy your panels. Windmills used to generate electricity use a lot of oil, and there have been major leaks, as well as decimating avian populations in the local area. Plus, it will never always be windy.

Yet one option politicians and those who want alternative energies will never bring up that can actually solve the problem: nuclear. With current day technologies, it is safer than ever to do, with slim to almost no risk of a meltdown or poisoning the environment. There are no conditions that cause an interruption of energy, and housing containment is robust enough to keep the environment around the area safe.

As far as water goes, what we need to do is build ocean barges solely for collecting floating piles of trash from the ocean and bringing them to the shore, as well as some tankers that can be used to suck up oil spills (otr use other means to deal with them).  With the current day technologies, we can break down garbage into their core chemicals for proper disposal or reuse in different ways or in new products.

Politicians love to fear-monger, to make things sound far worse than they are. The planet goes through repeated cycles of heating and cooling, and no amount of money or policies are going to change anything. Politicians won't solve problems because they want the issue to still be there to use as a rallying cry to convince people to give them more power and control. If they actually cared, they would be taking measures to try and get countries like China and India to start cutting their emissions and controlling their pollution. Those two are the worst offenders. It won't matter what the US does to cut down on the already much lower emissions we produce if these other two are cranking out even more with each passing year.

[Kobuk]

I had an odd thought. This is probably going to sound far fetched and won't make much sense (Science was never my strong suit in school.), but.........could we be cooking our own planet, but just don't realize it?
The Earth is constantly being bombarded every second, day, week, month, etc. by various forms of "natural" radiation: Cosmic rays, Gamma rays, X-rays, Microwave radiation, and so forth coming from outer space.
What if the human race was "adding" to this natural radiation with even more "man made" radiation coming from sources such as, but not limited to: Airplane radars, Military radars, Cellphone towers, Microwave transmitters, and more.
And all this added man made radiation in addition to all the natural radiation was "cooking" the planet and increasing temperatures, melting polar ice, etc.
Think about it. What happens when you put a bowl of water in the microwave? The microwaves (Radiation) put out heat the water (and/or air) in the microwave and increase it's temperature depending on the amount of time you want the water "cooked".
If you take all the man made devices that are putting out additional radiation, is it possible in some way that all that extra radiation is helping to "cook" our planet even faster?
I mean, how much do we really know about the harmful effects (If any.) all this additional man made radiation can have on our atmosphere?
I am not saying this is the cause for all the climate change around the planet. But it could be a contributing factor, if only slight.

[Jade Sinapu]

I was taught that all forms of energy on earth come from...
1.  Solar
2. Tidal
3.  Radioactive
4. Chemical
5. Outerspace sources

So in theory we do not add to the total energy on earth by using cellphones, microwave ovens , ham radios etc... we just convert one form of energy to another...

So example..
I have a solar panel that charges a battery, the battery powers a ham radio, the radio make radio waves into atmosphere.
Supposedly... science would say that my solar panel is 22% efficient,  and the other percent is reflected and/or made into heat.
Then my battery is maybe 89% efficent and rest is heat.
Lastly my radio is only 20 % efficient and rest is heat.
But no new energy was created or destroyed, just changed form.

 But... if we change how earth itself accumulates,  retains, transmits heat, yes we do have ability to change temp.

I know this much... if we were to paint the earth land masses with asphalt,  it decreases the albedo of earth,  which I believe means we reflect less light. Which means earth collects more light.  When light hits such a surface, it gets turned into heat. Most of that heat radiates into space, except...
The atmosphere is like a sermi-mirror and reflects it back...

So...
Our cities building materials, deforestation, and loss of ice, all cause earth to suck in more light and make it generate more heat energy.  And again CO2, methane, etc... cause atmosphere to not let heat out.

And in the terms of nuclear power,  what we are doing is releasing the heat stored in those radioactive elements faster than nature would have done. And given earth has a certain ability to release heat at a certain rate, that use of nuclear power should in theory temporarially increase global temps.

The best thing I can think of is to use less, recycle more , have less children, build cities with things like grass roofs, more greenery, more trees, less concrete, less asphalt,  ...

If we all lived like it was 1600...no problems.

P.s.
Snow reflects more heat than ice
Water  sucks in heat like a sponge .
Loss of snow on glaciers causes exponential  (feeds on it's self) runaway reaction in terms of melting...

[Kobuk]

Maybe what we really need to do is weed out the gene pool. Cut down on humanity. There's about 8 billion humans living on the Earth. Far too many for this planet to support. That's a lot of CO2 we're exhaling and adding to the atmosphere. 

[charcoal]

OK let's start with the pesos jk lol
I should turn my truck into biodiesel but winter solidify the oil

[Jade Sinapu]

Yep there sure are a lot of us.
Victims of our own success.

Too bad we don't breed once per 5 years or something...

[charcoal]

I guess its good gay rights are here so it'll be less people in the future

[Jade Sinapu]

I guess its good gay rights are here so it'll be less people in the future

LOL!

I guess that works...

[charcoal]

Or a good kick to the jewels

[Kobuk]

The Amazon rain forest is burning and Brazil doesn't give a damn.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/22/americas/amazon-fires-humans-intl-hnk-trnd/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/americas/live-news/amazon-wildfire-august-2019/index.html

[FarFar]

More CO2 in the atmosphere now. And less trees to recycle it. Yup.....a "win win situation"....NOT!  (is it getting hotter in here....)

[Jade Sinapu]

Don't worry folks, that Amazon burning is the company not the forest .  What you heard was fake news!  Nasty!

So...

yes.  I almost think I feel the plants and animals cringing and screaming as the fire moves and destroys.
bring on the cool and rain.