Lead, Ozone, Fossils, and Science denialism

[RetiredAt63]

Kind of looks like capitalism isn't compatible with the necessary changes. At least the way we know it.

I was mowing my grass this evening with my 52 year old electric tractor and thinking about how easy it would be to extend the useful working lives of some of our our things but capitalism can't function that way and keep everyone employed.

Watched this today: https://youtu.be/tfuezi8P0Gg

Guy starts our with a car worth very little and rehabs it for a few XXX dollars and a bunch of hours. This is exactly what myself and friends do for a hobby. Not necessarily for performance reasons, instead Mustachian reasons.

In the description of the video, he links to all the necessary supplies.

The more complicated things get the harder they are to maintain.

3 of my looms date back to the 1970s and they are as solid and usable as the day they were built.  Hard maple and some metal parts.  Nothing electrical let alone electronic.  Most modern thing is that the cords are nylon - and they could just as well be linen.

But the "old days" were not that sustainable either.  Kerosene was wonderful because it replaced whale oil, and the whales were doing the same thing as the cod did more recently - getting scarce.

Further back, river valley civilizations were fairly sustainable until they started denuding the forested hillsides.  Then erosion, soil hydrology changes and boom.

Modern medicine is both a bane and a boon.  Bane in that all the people who would have died young(ish) survived.  Boon in that we can finally control our fertility and maintain health so we don't have to depend on famines and plagues to keep our numbers reasonable.

[Just Joe]

https://www.carbonfootprint.com

Might be useful for anyone (like me) trying to establish a yardstick understanding of these topics.

[GuitarStv]

I hate the term 'carbon footprint'.

It was designed in the late '90s by British Petroleum as part of their multi-stage advertising plan to try to offload the damage they were doing to the environment onto individuals.  The goal was to make individuals chase down largely meaningless individual contributions to climate change and ignore the massive ones that corporations and governments cause.  If you live in a country with road and rail infrastructure, a military, fire departments, public hospitals . . . any honest carbon footprint calculator will show that the majority of your carbon usage is baked into where you live and out of your control.

[Just Joe]

Great points.

[RetiredAt63]

I hate the term 'carbon footprint'.

It was designed in the late '90s by British Petroleum as part of their multi-stage advertising plan to try to offload the damage they were doing to the environment onto individuals.  The goal was to make individuals chase down largely meaningless individual contributions to climate change and ignore the massive ones that corporations and governments cause.  If you live in a country with road and rail infrastructure, a military, fire departments, public hospitals . . . any honest carbon footprint calculator will show that the majority of your carbon usage is baked into where you live and out of your control.

True.  What it could be used for is policy changes re development.  So, looking at present infrastructure and seeing if land use change would have equally good results and lower the footprint.  For example, we keep talking on the forums about the problem with suburbia.  It might be useful to compare the carbon footprint of an area with a lot of suburbs with one that is more dense, and where public transit is used more.  Or compare suburbs with narrow streets with ones with wide streets ("stroads").

[LD_TAndK]

I hate the term 'carbon footprint'.

It was designed in the late '90s by British Petroleum as part of their multi-stage advertising plan to try to offload the damage they were doing to the environment onto individuals.  The goal was to make individuals chase down largely meaningless individual contributions to climate change and ignore the massive ones that corporations and governments cause.  If you live in a country with road and rail infrastructure, a military, fire departments, public hospitals . . . any honest carbon footprint calculator will show that the majority of your carbon usage is baked into where you live and out of your control.

Do you have a any good sources on this? I've seen before but am curious about the ratio.

The upper middle class Americans around me have an outsized personal carbon footprint that probably exceeds the emissions that are out of their control. Personal changes can also influence others around us and eventually public institutions, I don't think we should discount the importance of improving our own carbon footprint.

[GuitarStv]

I hate the term 'carbon footprint'.

It was designed in the late '90s by British Petroleum as part of their multi-stage advertising plan to try to offload the damage they were doing to the environment onto individuals.  The goal was to make individuals chase down largely meaningless individual contributions to climate change and ignore the massive ones that corporations and governments cause.  If you live in a country with road and rail infrastructure, a military, fire departments, public hospitals . . . any honest carbon footprint calculator will show that the majority of your carbon usage is baked into where you live and out of your control.

Do you have a any good sources on this? I've seen before but am curious about the ratio.

The upper middle class Americans around me have an outsized personal carbon footprint that probably exceeds the emissions that are out of their control. Personal changes can also influence others around us and eventually public institutions, I don't think we should discount the importance of improving our own carbon footprint.

It's hard to find one . . . since the idea of 'carbon footprint' was designed to foist responsibility onto individuals, calculators for your carbon footprint almost never take into account the stuff that individuals can't change.  You will have to do some legwork to get specific numbers.  For example, I live in Canada.

Maintaining one lane mile of urban highway is worth between 116,000 - 186,000 tons of CO2 emissions over a 50 year period (https://www.jtc.sala.ubc.ca/reports/analysis-ghg-roads.pdf) or 2320 - 3720 tons of CO2 each year.  Canada has 38,021 miles of highway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Highway_System_(Canada)), so assuming that all highways are only 2 lane to get a conservative estimate that's about 76042 lane miles of highway.  So a conservative estimate of the yearly costs of Canada's highways comes to 176,417,440 - 282,876,240 tons of CO2 each year.  We've got 38,250,000 people, so each individual's share of just the highway CO2 emissions works out to 4.6 - 7.4 tons of CO2 . . . just from maintaining highways alone.

The average Canadian's carbon footprint (excluding all those pesky government related things like highways that we pay for with our tax dollars) is 14.86 metric tons (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290653/per-capita-emissions-in-canada/#:~:text=The%20average%20Canadian%20emitted%2014.86%20metric%20tons%20of%20carbon%20dioxide%20in%202021.).  So, conservatively, highway CO2 increases that by between a quarter and a half.

[Glenstache]

I hate the term 'carbon footprint'.

It was designed in the late '90s by British Petroleum as part of their multi-stage advertising plan to try to offload the damage they were doing to the environment onto individuals.  The goal was to make individuals chase down largely meaningless individual contributions to climate change and ignore the massive ones that corporations and governments cause.  If you live in a country with road and rail infrastructure, a military, fire departments, public hospitals . . . any honest carbon footprint calculator will show that the majority of your carbon usage is baked into where you live and out of your control.

Do you have a any good sources on this? I've seen before but am curious about the ratio.

The upper middle class Americans around me have an outsized personal carbon footprint that probably exceeds the emissions that are out of their control. Personal changes can also influence others around us and eventually public institutions, I don't think we should discount the importance of improving our own carbon footprint.

It's hard to find one . . . since the idea of 'carbon footprint' was designed to foist responsibility onto individuals, calculators for your carbon footprint almost never take into account the stuff that individuals can't change.  You will have to do some legwork to get specific numbers.  For example, I live in Canada.

Maintaining one lane mile of urban highway is worth between 116,000 - 186,000 tons of CO2 emissions over a 50 year period (https://www.jtc.sala.ubc.ca/reports/analysis-ghg-roads.pdf) or 2320 - 3720 tons of CO2 each year.  Canada has 38,021 miles of highway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Highway_System_(Canada)), so assuming that all highways are only 2 lane to get a conservative estimate that's about 76042 lane miles of highway.  So a conservative estimate of the yearly costs of Canada's highways comes to 176,417,440 - 282,876,240 tons of CO2 each year.  We've got 38,250,000 people, so each individual's share of just the highway CO2 emissions works out to 4.6 - 7.4 tons of CO2 . . . just from maintaining highways alone.

The average Canadian's carbon footprint (excluding all those pesky government related things like highways that we pay for with our tax dollars) is 14.86 metric tons (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290653/per-capita-emissions-in-canada/#:~:text=The%20average%20Canadian%20emitted%2014.86%20metric%20tons%20of%20carbon%20dioxide%20in%202021.).  So, conservatively, highway CO2 increases that by between a quarter and a half.

If someone could invent a carbon-neutral concrete replacement, that alone would go a LONG ways towards helping our carbon budget and be a billion if not trillion dollar product.

[evme]

If someone could invent a carbon-neutral concrete replacement, that alone would go a LONG ways towards helping our carbon budget and be a billion if not trillion dollar product.

Researchers are working on it. Here's one example: https://www.carboncure.com/

"CarbonCure creates carbon removal technologies that introduce recycled CO₂ into fresh concrete to reduce its carbon footprint, without compromising performance."

Go down to the "our collective impact" section:

1,918,802
Truckloads delivered with CarbonCure concrete in the previous 365 days

Here's also an article about the process from way back in 2008 so this is obviously not a brand new idea:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cement-from-carbon-dioxide/

I love the idea of USING carbon dioxide itself as a building material. Probably will take many years before engineers are completely confident that as a material it has equivalent or better performance than the old recipe.

[GuitarStv]

I hate the term 'carbon footprint'.

It was designed in the late '90s by British Petroleum as part of their multi-stage advertising plan to try to offload the damage they were doing to the environment onto individuals.  The goal was to make individuals chase down largely meaningless individual contributions to climate change and ignore the massive ones that corporations and governments cause.  If you live in a country with road and rail infrastructure, a military, fire departments, public hospitals . . . any honest carbon footprint calculator will show that the majority of your carbon usage is baked into where you live and out of your control.

Do you have a any good sources on this? I've seen before but am curious about the ratio.

The upper middle class Americans around me have an outsized personal carbon footprint that probably exceeds the emissions that are out of their control. Personal changes can also influence others around us and eventually public institutions, I don't think we should discount the importance of improving our own carbon footprint.

It's hard to find one . . . since the idea of 'carbon footprint' was designed to foist responsibility onto individuals, calculators for your carbon footprint almost never take into account the stuff that individuals can't change.  You will have to do some legwork to get specific numbers.  For example, I live in Canada.

Maintaining one lane mile of urban highway is worth between 116,000 - 186,000 tons of CO2 emissions over a 50 year period (https://www.jtc.sala.ubc.ca/reports/analysis-ghg-roads.pdf) or 2320 - 3720 tons of CO2 each year.  Canada has 38,021 miles of highway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Highway_System_(Canada)), so assuming that all highways are only 2 lane to get a conservative estimate that's about 76042 lane miles of highway.  So a conservative estimate of the yearly costs of Canada's highways comes to 176,417,440 - 282,876,240 tons of CO2 each year.  We've got 38,250,000 people, so each individual's share of just the highway CO2 emissions works out to 4.6 - 7.4 tons of CO2 . . . just from maintaining highways alone.

The average Canadian's carbon footprint (excluding all those pesky government related things like highways that we pay for with our tax dollars) is 14.86 metric tons (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290653/per-capita-emissions-in-canada/#:~:text=The%20average%20Canadian%20emitted%2014.86%20metric%20tons%20of%20carbon%20dioxide%20in%202021.).  So, conservatively, highway CO2 increases that by between a quarter and a half.

If someone could invent a carbon-neutral concrete replacement, that alone would go a LONG ways towards helping our carbon budget and be a billion if not trillion dollar product.

It would certainly help . . . but road maintenance is only a small part of the carbon that your country puts into the atmosphere for you.  Office buildings for public employees, government server farms, police cars, fire trucks, the navy, the air force, rail systems, public transit . . . this list goes on and on.

[Glenstache]

Yes, it is and has been in the works for years. it is a tough nut to crack economically and at scale.

For context, concrete accounts for about 8% of total global carbon emissions. This is largely due to the chemistry of making lime in which huge amounts of energy are used to literally cook the CO2 out of CaCO3. It's also heavy to ship.

[Just Joe]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/study-carbon-offsets-arent-doing-their-job-overstate-impact/

Not encouraging.

[GuitarStv]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/study-carbon-offsets-arent-doing-their-job-overstate-impact/

Not encouraging.

Carbon offsets have always been bullshit.  The idea that you can just throw some money at climate change to make it go away without meaningfully altering the behaviors driving the problem is very flawed and rooted in magical thinking.

[sixwings]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/study-carbon-offsets-arent-doing-their-job-overstate-impact/

Not encouraging.

Carbon offsets have always been bullshit.  The idea that you can just throw some money at climate change to make it go away without meaningfully altering the behaviors driving the problem is very flawed and rooted in magical thinking.

It was always just a way for rich people and corporation to be able to pat themselves on the back while they took their 27th flight of the year in October.