D.I.Y Planet Cooling

[freeztar]

[QUOTE=Michaelangelica;175665]

Wimp.!
The new ones look quite snazzy and cheap $120.
Much more interesting exercise than Gym-jogging, doing weights, etc
Then, if I had an acre of lawn, I might have a different opinion

I didn't have anywhere close to an acre where I was renting, but I was...renting. Not too much fun for me to mow grass for someone else and not get paid, neigh, get penalized if I don't. Perhaps that is my stigmatism.

Don't be mean!
Lawns are nice, even if we can't afford to feed and water them.

If a lawn was here right now, I would slap it in the face (and I'm a pacifist).

But seriously, lawns are taking over our native habitat. We cut the grass before it goes to seed, so it is of little value to birds or any other wildlife. We certainly don't use the potential of grass in lawns.
Neighborhood associations baffle me. A friend of mine lives in a suburban neighborhood that takes neighborhood hygenics to the OCD level. You are not alowed to alter your yard in any way without consulting their "design team". The lawn is so mighty that nothing must disturb the amber waves of grain neon green glow of chemlawn.

What's wrong with a rake?

You try stepping on one! Nyack! Nyack! Nyack!

(Warning Quirky fact An Australian Bushfire fighter has adapted a leaf Blower to fight fires. Sounds crazy at first until you think of blowing out candles on a cake):cand le:

It did sound crazy until I heard it was an Australian, and then I knew it was crazy.

I belonged to an organic garden group and offered to give to the council a free info brocure on using clippings as mulch and compost if they would send it out with the rate bills.
They looked at us as if we were alien crackpots with leprosy. Couldn't get rid of us quickly enough.

typical...<sigh>

Now burning is banned and they have education officers teaching people to compost. How things can change!

It annoys me when I see people treating nature like they would treat their homes.

Let's take out a second mortgage!

It annoys me when I see people treating Nature like it's not their home.

This attitude extends to people buying huge plastic plants because they always look perfect. They use up oil in manufacture and do nothing for anybody. They are lies.

I wouldn't say they are worthless to everybody because I bet you most people can't tell the difference between a real plant and a fake plant (within reason). If their senses are subconsciously tricked into believing their environment to be orderly and perfect, then they too will follow that trend. Plastic people make plastic plants.

Wake up,(not you freeztar) nature isn't perfect. So a leaf is eaten so a butterfly lives; so what? that is nature-Nature is either rotting or rooting (in all senses of the word).

Nature may not be perfect in our eyes (whatever perfect means), but it seems to be a perfect machine, imho.
A machine that is capable of self sustenance, regeneration, cosmic protection, and evolution.

---
And back from left field...
I always try to carry my grocery items by hand if possible. I always refuse a bag unless absolutely necessary. What sucks is when they bag my single toothbrush and I say I don't need a bag for it so they take the bag and throw it away.
And who needs an 18-inch receipt for 2 small items? If I have to fold the receipt more than once to get it in my pocket, then I either spent a lot of money or something is wrong. These types of things seem easy to fix because the grocer could save bundles by not excessively using paper and ink, not too mention machine-time. Too bad the advertisers pay more.

Is anyone familiar with Sea Foam? A friend suggested it to me to remove carbon from the engine of my car. I'm all about keeping my engine tip-top, but I'm assuming this cleaned-out carbon exits the vehicle at some point, either by oil or exhaust, or both. Anyone know how it works exactly? Could it make my car burn cleaner? (they claim it helps you pass emissions tests)

Time for bed....zzzzzzz

[Michaelangelica]

[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Burning leaves shouldn't be a bad thing in the Big Sheme of Things. You're simply sending carbon back into the atmosphere which was taken out a season ago. It does, however, make for a short-term unpleasantness.

There is some pretty toxic stuff in smoke of all kinds.

Lawns shouldn't be banned! Grasses (all kinds) are one of the fastest-growing plants! Watering them might be a bit of a problem, seeing as evaporation into the atmosphere during non-rainy periods will increase the moisture content of the atmosphere, water vapour being a greenhouse gas too, of course.

I am told most lawns and verges in Brisbane have died -no water- level 5 restrictions (140 litres a day). We have had some good rains in NSW

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I propose we forget about the whole sorry mess and go for a beer. Whaddaya say?

LOL; Sounds good to me.
Drink beer while Rome burns!
(Um. . . is that from an ecologically friendly brewery?)

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Drink beer while Rome burns!
(Um. . . is that from an ecologically friendly brewery?)

'Course it is!

After enough beer, everyone and everything is amazingly friendly! All it takes is enough beer!

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by freeztar

What about a ban on lawns?
That would save CO2 from people sitting on the sofa watching TV rather than exercising with a push mower.

Lawns in the desert?
Arizona State University
Here May 25 show
Science Show

[Michaelangelica]

This was a facinating "Catalyst" programme on ABC TV last week
Some good ideas
Transcript
FROM
Catalyst: Catalyst Extra: “People Power” - ABC TV Science
Wave Power: Alan Burns, Perth, W.A.
Alan Burns, former chairman of one of Australia’s largest oil and gas companies, is the unexpected champion of a new green technology promising to provide freshwater and electricity with zero carbon emissions. Catalyst takes a look at his wave power / desalination invention which is about to be trialled off the coast of Fremantle in Perth.

Christie Walk: Paul Downton, Adelaide, SA
Architect Paul Downton believes that since cities are a central cause of the global climate problem, they should also be part of the solution. Involved in climate change action since the Eighties, Paul’s ecologically friendly building designs have culminated in Adelaide’s “Christie Walk” - 20 inner-city dwellings on a half-acre block designed to test his vision of an “Eco-city”.

Plastic Bags - Zero Tolerance: Ben Kearney, Coles Bay, TAS
What started with a Schoolie’s-Week clean-up in 2003, turned into an eco-obsession for Ben Kearney, local baker at Coles Bay, Tasmania. Disturbed by the amount of plastic bags he collected close to the marine park, Ben decided to make his home-town the first in the nation to become a plastic bag free-zone. He not only succeeded, but inspired many other Australian towns to do the same.

Bike Bus – Convoy of Converts: Fiona Campbell, Sydney NSW
Just by driving 10 kilometres to work each day, you’ll contribute 1.3 tonnes of greenhouse
gases to our atmosphere each year. Now a lot of us would like to help save the planet by leaving the car at home and jumping on the old “pushie” but many find the idea of cycling in the city pretty scary. When Fiona Campbell started cycling into the CBD, so many potential peddlers sought her guidance she felt obliged to set up a "bike bus". With safety in numbers, Fiona’s convoy of carbon converts is swelling in confidence.

Rally for Rail: Prof. Peter Newman, Perth W.A.
After witnessing the two oil crises in the 1970’s, Professor Peter Newman has rallied for trains in Perth. By organising community campaigns and putting pressure on successive governments, Newman has seen the re-opening of the Perth-Fremantle train line which was closed in 1979, electrification of the old diesel network and the construction of two new lines for the north and south of Perth. The story of the rail system’s rejuvenation in Perth has become an inspiration for cities around the world, and demonstrates that local heroes can make a global diference.

All Fired Up – Working Together: Peter Cooke, Jabiru, NT.
Peter Cooke, together with fire ecologist Jeremy Russell-Smith and senior traditional owner Bardayal (Lofty) Nadjamerrek, was instrumental in the formation of the West Arnhem Fire Management Agreement (WAFMA). This is the first major instance of private funding being linked to greenhouse gas emission abatement through better savanna burning practices.
Years of persistence led to this historic ‘carbon trading’ agreement between government, business, local councils and Indigenous partners.
Aboriginal people say ‘healthy country, healthy people’ but Peter Cooke likes to think you can expand that to ‘healthy planet’.

Human Sign: Coni Forcey and Lucy Allinson, Melbourne VIC.
One Sunday in April approximately 5000 people gathered on Sandringham Beach to ‘write’ a human sign saying “HALT CLIMATE CHANGE NOW”. The event was organised by two local mums, Coni Forcey and Lucy Allinson, who are desperately concerned about their children’s future environment. 13 local schools and around 200 members of the Tuvalu pacific island community came together for the event.
The Tuvaluans, whose small island nation made up of nine tiny coral atolls, could be amongst the first to see their homeland submerged by rising sea levels, stood tall to form the letter ‘T’. Lucy and Coni hope their grass-roots campaign will highlight the importance of “people power” in the wider community.

[Qfwfq]

A beer is alway good'n'friendly, but...

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Burning leaves shouldn't be a bad thing in the Big Sheme of Things. You're simply sending carbon back into the atmosphere which was taken out a season ago. It does, however, make for a short-term unpleasantness.

You could say the same about fossil fuels, carbon is carbon, regardless of when it was taken out.

Now I've heard this reasoning as one point pro biofuels but I don't see the point unless the crops are taking that much more carbon compared with whatever else would be otherwise done on the same land. As for most things in practice, it's not as simple as at first sight.

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Watering them might be a bit of a problem, seeing as evaporation into the atmosphere during non-rainy periods will increase the moisture content of the atmosphere, water vapour being a greenhouse gas too, of course.

Again it depends on what you otherwise do on the same ground. If the alternative is keeping it parched and bone dry, yeah that's a small difference but a small one. Because, further and mostly, water vapour in the low atmosphere ought to be vaguely in equilibrium with the surface. In the long term and wide scale it certainly is, so the real, global effect depends on how the surface is being kept -overall and long term- so boiling a whole cauldron of water away can't have a lasting and cumulative effect on atmospheric moisture.

Burn more hydrogen than carbon.

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

You could say the same about fossil fuels, carbon is carbon, regardless of when it was taken out.

That's just not true. Carbon taken from the atmosphere converted into plant material that eventually gets burned is simply carbon making its rounds actively in the carbon cycle. That's about the same as atmospheric carbon being converted into grass and then eaten by a cow which suffers from flatulence and sends the carbon back into the atmosphere in methane form. Bush fires and bovine flatulence amounts to the same thing.

Fossil fuels, however, does not add carbon to the atmosphere that was sequestered a season ago. The carbon injected into the atmosphere via fossil fuels used to be in the active carbon cycle millions of years ago. Burning fossil fuels adds to the total atmospheric carbon load, increasing the carbon currently active in the cycle. Bringing ancient buried and fossilised carbon back into the cycle will bring complications that we just cannot foresee. Burning a field that consist of carbon that's currently actively participating in the cycle, won't add to the total carbon load - the field is part and parcel of the cycle. As long as it does get replanted, however. If the purpose is deforestation, the carbon sent up into the atmosphere isn't replaced by new growth, which means that you're in effect adding to the carbon load. You need new growth to take back from the atmosphere what you've put in when you burnt the field.

Of course, carbon is carbon. If I burn a field and new growth happens to take up a carbon atom that was injected into the atmosphere by fossil fuel, you won't notice any difference to the plant. But the fossil-fuel carbon atom that is now in the plant, has taken the place of the carbon atom that was injected via a burning field. That carbon atom will now float around, increasing the carbon load. But fossil fuels adds to the total load, whilst burning fields don't - provided they are replanted.

Again it depends on what you otherwise do on the same ground. If the alternative is keeping it parched and bone dry, yeah that's a small difference but a small one. Because, further and mostly, water vapour in the low atmosphere ought to be vaguely in equilibrium with the surface. In the long term and wide scale it certainly is, so the real, global effect depends on how the surface is being kept -overall and long term- so boiling a whole cauldron of water away can't have a lasting and cumulative effect on atmospheric moisture.

If you wet an area artificially and that causes an increase of plant growth, keep in mind that their stomas inject lots of moisture into the atmosphere. If this continues, the average moisture content downwind will increase, which will increase the chance of rainfall, which will increase plant growth downwind, which will moisten the air, which will cause those plants to inject moisture via their stomas, which will increase the chance of rain downwind, which will...etc., etc. And it all depends on the initial turning of a big dry patch of land into an artificial wet green patch. And the wetting of normally dry ground artificially will increase the moisture content of the atmosphere, even if only locally. This will trap more heat. And so on and so forth.

Coming to your boiling a cauldron of water analogy, if the world is the size of your kitchen, and is mostly a closed system save for energy coming in from the sun, and you boil a cauldron of water, you will moisten the air in your kitchen. This will increase the chances of mold and other growth forming on the walls where the water condensated. The actual water content of your kitchen's atmosphere is increased. The plant growth increases, using the moisture to grow and breathe back into the atmosphere. Then the increased plant growth raises the moisture content and keeps it higher than before you boiled the cauldron. Rough analogy, I know - but you get the idea.
And the more moisture in your kitchen, the more heat is trapped. Which, of course, increases the evaporation of other water that didn't initially come from the cauldron, which increases the temperature even more, which makes more water evaporate, etc.

Burn more hydrogen than carbon.

It all depends where the hydrogen comes from. Burning fossil fuels is actually burning Hydrogen. The water coming from your car's tailpipe every now and then is simply condensed water vapour that is a major consitutent in exhaust gasses from normal petrol and diesel fuels. The carbon content in the exhaust is bad and sad, but carbon is necessary to bind the hydrogen into a easily pumpable and storable form. But we've been running hydrogen vehicles since Henry Ford's days.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

A beer is alway good'n'friendly, but...You could say the same about fossil fuels, carbon is carbon, regardless of when it was taken out.

Now I've heard this reasoning as one point pro biofuels but I don't see the point unless the crops are taking that much more carbon compared with whatever else would be otherwise done on the same land. As for most things in practice, it's not as simple as at first sight.
.

You are right. (I think)
The only way it can be taken out is if we decide to bury it as in Terra preta.
In 1997 we burned the equivalent of over 400 years of fossil sunlight falling on this planet.

The Compost Oven??
Compost Bins, how to compost, composting hints and tips
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s1718339.htm


The Biolytix Filter ??
New Inventors: Biolytix Filter


On lawns and mowing
Limber up guys (gals?) this is the future

Manual Lawn Mowers Are Making a Comeback

(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green) :: Ben Kogan from Chicago uses a manual lawn mower to cut his lawn on Wednesday, May 9, 2007. Kogan started using the push mower this spring and he is part of the growing trend of people switching over from electric- or gas-powered mowers. Some factors such as the environment and a growing number of women doing the mowing has caused a resurgence of those quaint reminders of yesteryear.

By Associated Press
DON BABWIN
Updated: 5/28/2007

CHICAGO

Powerful, loud mowers have been showing lawns who's boss for decades. But now contraptions that couldn't cut butter without a good shove are quietly — really quietly — making a comeback.

Manual lawn mowers, long the 98-pound weaklings of the tool shed, are pushing their way, or, more accurately, being pushed around more yards all over the country.

''It's phenomenal,'' said Teri McClain, inside sales administrator at the 112-year-old American Lawn Mower Co. in Shelbyville, Ind., which she said is the only manufacturer of reel mowers in the United States. ''Sales continue to rise every year.''

[Qfwfq]

Awesome rant Boerseun!

Don't think I'm missing too many of the points you make, only the whole thing is far from simple and very iffy, and there are plenty of ifs lurking in your post. Now, I go and tell you it's not simple, when I had put things far more simply, condensing them in a nutshell, in my tiny little post!

The obvious difference between fossil and other carbon is that it less easily gets back into atmospheric carbon dioxide without our action... especially the remaining stuff, after massive exploitation by us. It is now less accessible and of course it is always a tad less digestible, however it was still subject to various causes of ignition in past times when more abundant at the surface. Have the processes that formed them completely stopped? I wouldn't be so sure. Whether or not anthracite and petroleum are still forming, peat certainly is and there are many ways in which carbon from plants can end up not getting burnt back into the atmosphere. Perhaps marble and other carbonaceous rocks are still being formed. Even your cow doesn't fart all the carbon from grass into methane, not even all the rest is oxidated and breathed out by the cow and who eats her meat. If you avoid burning leather products for instance, that's one example. Another is what Mike says. In short, you can have carbon on the way out, it's only a matter of how much of it, against how much on the way in.

Now notice that I had said "unless the crops are taking that much more carbon compared with whatever else would be otherwise done on the same land" which points to there being many ifs (and I should have written "exactly that much" too). If biofuel crops are grown instead of tobacco, fine, tobacco is worse, but in other cases more carbon could be going out.

Now it's obvious that burning coal and petroleum doesn't help, that using vegetable sources can be better, I just don't agree with the arithmetic being so simple. Chop down a forest to grow your biofuel crops and maybe even burn the wood in your fireplace, and perhaps the trees would have been taking more carbon out if they had been left till much older. Perhaps I could have phrased it even better, it depends on what use of the land the biofuel crops are in place of; far too much forest is being destroyed and it takes a while for new trees to be photosynthesizing as much as the old ones.

It's also obvious that burning fossil fuels is actually burning hydrogen and btw this goes back to well before Ford, ever heard of coal? It's also obvious that it's burning carbon too, else you would be contradicting yourslef here, and the ratio changes from methane (including your cow's farts) to other hydrocarbons, carbohydrates, alcohols etc. It remains that more hydrogen and less carbon is better, for a simple reason that escapes you. First, in your sealed kitchen example the cauldron would be equivalent to most of Earth's oceans and seas, if not almost all, play it down a smidgen. Then you even mention the mold and other growth forming on the walls where the water condensated. There you are! Condensation!!! Then you say the plants will raise the moisture even further... by breathing it back out. They can't be increasing the balance except for what they produce by burning hydrogen. But is this to mean we should grow less plants instead of more? Oh well, to the point, condensation. The simple thing is that water is one helluvalot less volatile than carbon dioxide, try making dry ice in your fridge. Try melting it into a glass of liquid. Show me the oceans of liquid carbon dioxide and the carbon dioxide precipitation I've been missing.

Now I'm not telling you to install a tube in your cow's anus and put the dung in a sealed casing for composting, but if these are in a well-closed building with air being gently pumped out, just enough that elsewhere air comes only in, and taken to wherever a fuel burner is needing oxygen anyway, even if it's just a tiny amount of the other fuel saved it is also far better to burn the methane than to let it out unburnt.

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

Awesome rant Boerseun!

Thanks! It's nice to be appreciated every now and then!

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

...however it was still subject to various causes of ignition in past times when more abundant at the surface. Have the processes that formed them completely stopped? I wouldn't be so sure.

Of course the processes haven't stopped. But what might take millions of years of carbon concentration in vast underground oil fields or coal seams is being undone by us injecting it back into the *active* carbon cycle in only a century or two. All the carbon that's currently underground in oil or coal form wasn't all actively part of the cycle at once. It took a bit of time.

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

Whether or not anthracite and petroleum are still forming, peat certainly is and there are many ways in which carbon from plants can end up not getting burnt back into the atmosphere. Perhaps marble and other carbonaceous rocks are still being formed. Even your cow doesn't fart all the carbon from grass into methane, not even all the rest is oxidated and breathed out by the cow and who eats her meat. If you avoid burning leather products for instance, that's one example. Another is what Mike says. In short, you can have carbon on the way out, it's only a matter of how much of it, against how much on the way in.

That's certainly true. But the burning of fossil fuels goes straight into the atmosphere. Burning a field goes into the atmosphere, too. But the field will regrow in the blink of an eye, compared to the time it'll take for the carbon coming from fossil fuels to end up back in an oilwell again. Just as long as the field is regrown. Deforestation, of course, is another matter completely, because the carbon isn't taken out again by new growth.

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

It's also obvious that burning fossil fuels is actually burning hydrogen and btw this goes back to well before Ford, ever heard of coal? It's also obvious that it's burning carbon too, else you would be contradicting yourslef here, and the ratio changes from methane (including your cow's farts) to other hydrocarbons, carbohydrates, alcohols etc. It remains that more hydrogen and less carbon is better, for a simple reason that escapes you. First, in your sealed kitchen example the cauldron would be equivalent to most of Earth's oceans and seas, if not almost all, play it down a smidgen. Then you even mention the mold and other growth forming on the walls where the water condensated. There you are! Condensation!!!

Yes. That's what happens when clouds form. It simply returns the water vapour to the surface in liquid form. But the problem arises when we artificially water large tracts of land (where this argument started) in order to grow crops in previously unsuitable land. The water vapour that will inevitably end up in the atmosphere through this will trap more heat, seeing as water vapour is a particularly nasty greenhouse gas, which will raise the atmospheric temperature, which will raise the volume of water vapour that can be suspended in the atmosphere - which will in turn raise the volume of greenhouse gas (water vapour) even further. It's a bit of a bitch, really.

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

Then you say the plants will raise the moisture even further... by breathing it back out.

Yes. Plants take up moisture from the ground (as well as the atmosphere), in some cases vast forests with big trees have serious taproots that suck groundwater up straight from the aquifer. Now plants need to breathe. This they do via stomas on their leaves. This breathing injects a heck of a lot of water vapour into the atmosphere. Exceptions to this might be cactii and similar plants which developed a waxy coating to retain as much moisture as possible. Big trees, however, don't. A big fat eucalyptis can suck up to 1,000 liters of water per day. They are commonly used to drain swamps and wetlands, because of this. You won't find a eucalyptis increasing its mass with a 1,000 kilograms per day, however. So where does the water go? You guessed it. Up the root, through the trunk, out the stoma. Close on a ton of water vapour is injected into the atmosphere by a big eucalyptis every single day. Imagine what a forest with a few thousand of them will do. This water vapour will condense out, surely. But at any given time, if there are more forests, there will be more vapour in the air between having been breathed out by the trees, and having been rained out the sky back to the aquifer. And water vapour is a greenhouse gas.

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

They can't be increasing the balance except for what they produce by burning hydrogen. But is this to mean we should grow less plants instead of more?

Of course not. But we shouldn't be artificially watering deserts to turn them into rainforests. The deserts are just as necessary for the global balance as the rainforests might be. If you plant a tree, make sure the thing can live without it having to be watered and kept alive artificially. If it dies, there might not be enough water at that specific locale. And that's my whole point. Leave it be and find another suitable spot.

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

Oh well, to the point, condensation. The simple thing is that water is one helluvalot less volatile than carbon dioxide, try making dry ice in your fridge. Try melting it into a glass of liquid. Show me the oceans of liquid carbon dioxide and the carbon dioxide precipitation I've been missing.

I fail to see the relevance of this. I don't remember mentioning any oceans of liquid carbs.
If you're saying that carbon dioxide is worse than water vapour because of its higher volatility, sure, that is so. I never denied that fact. But water vapour is a greenhouse gas which traps heat and the more plants you have, the more water vapour you'll have suspended at any given time - which will raise temperatures, which will make the atmosphere capable of absorbing even more water vapour, which raises temperature, etc.

Of course the maths isn't as simple as 1+1. Not from my side, and not from your side, either. It's a very grey area, dodgy at best. I'm not saying we should stop planting trees. All I'm saying is we should reconsider planting trees where there were none to begin with.

As a case in point, Johannesburg in South Africa is a city in a forest. It used to be open grass plains about 100 years ago. There wasn't a tree in sight. Just vast rolling fields of grass-covered emptiness. And then the city started growing, and the new suburbanites decided to plant trees. And today, Johannesburg is the biggest artificial forest in the world. Thousands of square kilometers, in an artificial forest that is artificially kept alive with garden hoses and sprinklers. The garden hoses and sprinklers was necessary for the first couple of decades. Today, the city of Johannesburg is probably one of the wettest spots in Southern Africa. The hallmark of Jo'burg is almost daily (and violent) impressive thunderstorms. This simply didn't happen 100 years ago. The forest Jo'burg finds itself in is injecting so much water vapour into the atmosphere that the average rainfall in the city have risen dramatically during the last century.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Sure. Until the washed-away topsoil and surface erosion is kept in mind. So, every solution has some penalties, I guess. But simply planting trees as a quick and easy and simple solution might come back and bite you in the ass 50 years from now if all the topsoil is washed away. And the rotting plant material simply doesn't get into the ground fast enough to repair the damage.

Quid pro quo, I guess.