4 replies to this topic

[wjfox]

Found this via ThinkProgress.

"For one discussion of the kind of wars we might be seeing, albeit for the year 2046, here is a three-part radio series on Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian journalist and historian of warfare."

http://gwynnedyer.com/radio/

[kjaggard]

Actually that's one of the areas of tthe timeline I have the most trouble with. Yes the climate is having trouble right now and what we've been doing the last fifty years will continue to increase it for a bit (rather like the build up of certain drugs in the body don't start taking full effect for some time before they accumulate and then take a long time to filter out after the drugs are stopped).

But with Tech like thermal depolymerization to convert organic waste that otherwise ferments into methan and carbon dioxide releases from land fills and incinerators into minerals, water, carbon, natural gas, and refined oil. We could mine our landfills for the fuel we need and rid th the world of the pollution and greenhouse gasses produce by waste sites.

Even more interesting is converting that oil into plastics and polymers, to sequester the carbon. Use the carbon dust/coal produced to make graphene or nano structures.

Then using algea tanks create biofuel by pulling CO 2 out of the air and using it to feed algea tanks to grow, then turn the algea to bio-fuel repeat. If you just take ten percent of the biofuel and turn it into plastics you will actually consume more CO2 than is put into the atmosphere from the biofuel cycle.

Increase crop land by covering former landfill sites with carbon dioxide consuming produce creating plants to pull more from the air.

Spread these techs along with green power generation and cars, and before mid century we could be seeing a trend of decreaseing greenhouse gasses toward preindustrial levels.

Water? Howabout draining raising sea levels via a pipeline that feeds solar electrolysis plants that break the Hydrogen and oxegen apart and store it in tanks (you also will get sea salt crystalizing in the tanks and can be sold to markets). The result is higher Oxegen levels and hydrogen for the fuelcell power storage systems for cars, plans and other crafts as well as home fuelcels for power storage. Or even hydrogen fueled hot water heaters. The byproduct of the hydrogen fuelcells and water heaters is clean water.

I'll listen to the radio show to see what they have to say, but honestly all these solutions exist today at costs of only a few million each which for an infrastructure changing profit making bussiness start up of this scale that's not as expensive as it sounds.

[wjfox]

all these solutions exist today at costs of only a few million each

All very good, but Republicans and other conservative parties are hell-bent on preventing any sort of green initiatives whatsoever.

See for example - http://thinkprogress...nergy-programs/

Plus, the sheer amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - combined with amplifying feedbacks and methane release - makes it doubtful we can reach pre-industrial levels without an absolutely massive global effort (we're talking a WW2-style industrial mobilisation and deployment of clean tech/sequestration). Contemporary political and economic systems are simply incompatible with the type of action that's required.

[kjaggard]

maybe I'm an idealist but some of the Idealist I know and have worked with in the past eight or so months, are less interested in what governments are going to do about economies and evironmental concerns and they are pushing through community projects all over the place to make local scale changes toward the 0 waste and carbon neutral end of the spectrums.

I think with that, the economic insentive toward finding alternative ways of feeding and earning a living in a time when the governments are actually impedeing the processes, will actually fuel a world wide governmental change toward one that responds to the populace.

The biggest hurdles are getting the population to buy into the green approach, which the radio program did address in part two I think which state that instead of making it about adopting another groups ideologies it's actually successful to frame a series of actions that would be the ideological approach their groups would take to addressing the issue (ie don't debate it being an issue or how much, tell them what people like them can do to fix a problem that exists).

And the other is getting industries to change. That one is both hard and easy. You can't tell them to change because we've seen they have no intrest in listening to that, and you can't enforce restrictions they can weasel out of. But they exist solely on a diet of consumerism. Sway that away from them and they will panic into making changes. Do it right and not fall for the least effort they can get away with, and you can change the game. And if you can sell it to the companies as their idea and branding and marketing strategy and it'll go off like rockets.

But again I'm optimistic. I also happen to feel that some of the other tech coming down the line in the next few years will be designed not solely as fixes for the problem of environmental change, but see enviromental changing factors as valuble resource and mine them right out of the danger zone. Like using CO2 to electrolytically sperated CO via renewable power and using the CO as fuel in a closed loop system they become like batteries. Build a world of CO battery plentiful supply and you sequester huge amounts. Sell that as a bussiness sound plan and part of an earth friendly image a company can sell it's consumers as it uses renewable energy gathering with CO power cell storage. Boom.

Thermal depolymerisation can become a good source of taking old tires and such and creating a supply of carbon for use in carbon nano fiber and other fullerens. Create a market for reclaimed carbon and people will farm it out of the air. Create a market for Bio-gas to power cross country shipping trains and trucks, every waste source of methan and biogas will be farmed for it. That turns something like bio gas which is several times worse than CO2 into just CO2 which we'll be farming like mad from the air anyway.

Least ways that's the idea. I can actually see a point where in the future we'll be reopening the internal combustion route because we've dropped the CO2 levels so much we might need to bring them back up.

Water gathering methods are trickier but not impossable. moisture vaporators? they exist : http://www.technovel...sp?NewsNum=3460

fuel cells convert hydrogen and oxegen into water vapor. So create a hydrogen economy and ship hydrogen to homes for heating and cooling via fuel cells. Create the hydrogen from splitting sea waters and remove the salt by splitting the water (the salt actually can make that process easier) and you end up with fresh water being created and ciculated in inland areas from salt water from the sea. Use pipelines for salt water.

Heck even the use of hydrogen in airships might be a way to do it. Use hydrogen lift gas to carry cargo of other sorts to the inland locations turn the hyrdogen into fuel for the homes inland and drop the cargo off. drive the collapsed airship envelope and storage trucks back across country, likely hauling cargo from inland to seas, and repeat.

[eacao]

All very good, but Republicans and other conservative parties are hell-bent on preventing any sort of green initiatives whatsoever.

American government is not the only government on earth.