The Environment, The Bad, Is There Any Good Left?

lizkat

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I'm sure God not going to defend Biden administration's EPA take on this one and I'm wondering if Biden will even support this idea. I'll be disappointed if he does.


The bolding below is mine...

In the short term, the agency is looking to lower the amount of biofuels that refiners are required to blend into the U.S. fuel pool because the COVID-19 pandemic has sapped fuel demand. The move could be a risk for President Joe Biden's administration, as some could view it as favoring oil refiners over the lower-carbon biofuels industry even as the administration presses companies to reduce emissions.

Yeah no kidding. Some might see it that way, yep. And what a weak excuse for it, too. How many other USA business segments besides the oilcos were looking at "sapped demand" for their product during --or as an ongoing result of-- the covid pandemic? Boo hoo, special tears for the oil and gas behemoths.

I see why the EPA is releasing the 2022 mandates at the same time they're running this inadvisable adjustment of 2021 standards to below the 2020 ones, hoping that people will understand that down the road it's meant to be a net wash on the environment

But, news flash: that is not how the actual environment will deal with it. And there's no guarantee a future administration's EPA will hold feet to the fire on a larger than normal biofuels mixing requirement anyway.

We really are doomed if we're going to keep putting short term profit considerations perennially in front of a last real effort to avoid passing the point of no return on climate change.
 

Huntn

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@lizkat we are doomed. They just launched a Civil Rights complaint because of a plant in Port Author that releases suffer dioxide, who just renewed their lease, but the State has grandfathered it in so it can keep spewing sulfur dioxide above EPA limits and it’s surrounded by low income families. $$$> the poor.

Texas Commission On Environmental Quality (that means something, haha). 👀

 

Yoused

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I'm sure God not going to defend Biden administration's EPA take on this one and I'm wondering if Biden will even support this idea. I'll be disappointed if he does.
Unfortunately, I have to disagree with you. Ethanol production is enormously inefficient, and alcohol can also be pretty rough on engines. In addition, burning alcohol on its own can be at least as bad for air quality. Biodiesel might, possibly, be a better alternative, especially if it is made from cooking waste (used fry oil), but I am extremely skeptical that is could be produced in sufficient quantity.

Then, of course, there is good old hydrogen, which produces only steam – but producing the H2 to begin with is a huge problem, and handling it is beyond difficult, as it leaks out of almost anything.

In other words, biofuels are a bullshit band-aid "solution" to problems that need real fixes.
 

lizkat

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Unfortunately, I have to disagree with you. Ethanol production is enormously inefficient, and alcohol can also be pretty rough on engines. In addition, burning alcohol on its own can be at least as bad for air quality. Biodiesel might, possibly, be a better alternative, especially if it is made from cooking waste (used fry oil), but I am extremely skeptical that is could be produced in sufficient quantity.

Then, of course, there is good old hydrogen, which produces only steam – but producing the H2 to begin with is a huge problem, and handling it is beyond difficult, as it leaks out of almost anything.

In other words, biofuels are a bullshit band-aid "solution" to problems that need real fixes.

My own feeling has been that we should have been focused on renewables and in particular solar technology innovations since back in the 1970s. But at this point, anything that lets the oilcos continue to make profit off stuff that should stay in the ground strikes me as a move in the wrong direction.

I don't really care about the mix of fuels being a car-engine problem. We need to be done w/ the combustion engine already. I'm not a particular fan of ethanol as fuel additive either... or the conversion of corn to HFCS for that matter... and I used to ask people only half-jokingly what they'd do if the behemoths who grow and process corn decided one day that making corn flakes or corn meal for human consumption was an extravagant waste of money, but only because it was more costly than just boiling the stuff up into syrups or distilling it.

In days when oil was considered scarcer than it was going to end up in reality, corn ending up in gas tanks was win-win for farmers and oilcos alike. The former got to sell more of their stuff and the oilcos could hang back and still make a profit without running through then-expected reserves too quickly.

In case some of us haven't noticed, Big Ag is not especially influenced by nutrition or great natural taste when it comes to how they manage the crops underlying our food supply. What matters most is making less costly the crops' resistance to unfavorable weather and pests, plus the transportability of finished product. This is how we end up with fish genes in strawberries and tomatoes bred to tolerate bumpy rides in cargo planes and reefer trucks. As investors we can maybe love it. As food consumers maybe not so much. As drivers of cars, well... time to cut out all those Big Ag and Big Dead Dinos middlemen still standing between the sun and the drive-train.
 

Yoused

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In case some of us haven't noticed, Big Ag is not especially influenced by nutrition or great natural taste when it comes to how they manage the crops ...

You know, I read some while ago that it is illegal for farmers to save seeds. If I lay in 100 acres of triticale, I am not allowed to sell 90 acres worth and use ten acres worth to plant next years crop.

And who passed this law? Which politicians/party are responsible for this legislation? No, not the Democrats, and not the Republicans, not the Tories or Labour or AFD. It comes from the World Trade Organization.

Yes, the unelected body of commerce & industry bootlickers who enforce their rulings with sanctions. If your country fails to punish their farmers for actions that the WTO has ruled illegal, the WTO will punish your country until they come to heel.
 

lizkat

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You know, I read some while ago that it is illegal for farmers to save seeds. If I lay in 100 acres of triticale, I am not allowed to sell 90 acres worth and use ten acres worth to plant next years crop.

And who passed this law? Which politicians/party are responsible for this legislation? No, not the Democrats, and not the Republicans, not the Tories or Labour or AFD. It comes from the World Trade Organization.

Yes, the unelected body of commerce & industry bootlickers who enforce their rulings with sanctions. If your country fails to punish their farmers for actions that the WTO has ruled illegal, the WTO will punish your country until they come to heel.

I think it's only illegal to save seeds from a GMO crop. GMO or not, there are problems with saving some crops' seeds anyway since many have long been hybrids, so won't come back true to the crop that produced the seeds.

But it's true that the Big Ag seed producers make farmers sign agreements not to save seeds, also true those genetically engineered ones require special pesticides, more water etc than heritage crops, and because they're monocultured in huge farming plots they may tend to be more vulnerable to the odd pest or weather conditions that the GMO seeds in combination with their protective pesticides were not engineered to resist.
 

Huntn

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If you are going to sell your beach front property, better get’r done. They are talking a several foot rise in sea level if this thing collapses into the ocean. …heard on NPR Today.

Scientists warn a critical ice shelf in Antarctica could shatter within the next five years​

 

rdrr

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If you are going to sell your beach front property, better get’r done. They are talking a several foot rise in sea level if this thing collapses into the ocean. …heard on NPR Today.

Scientists warn a critical ice shelf in Antarctica could shatter within the next five years​

This and the first recorded Minnesota Tornados in DECEMBER. But... lets continue down this path, because it is just a Lib conspiracy.
 

lizkat

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If you are going to sell your beach front property, better get’r done. They are talking a several foot rise in sea level if this thing collapses into the ocean. …heard on NPR Today.

Scientists warn a critical ice shelf in Antarctica could shatter within the next five years​


So it's not working, what the North Carolina realtors' lobby (and in particular those in the coastal counties) once went for: to prohibit forward calculations of sea level rise using data any more recent than a hundred years ago.

Imagine modern day scientists' f'g surprise.

 

Huntn

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This and the first recorded Minnesota Tornados in DECEMBER. But... lets continue down this path, because it is just a Lib conspiracy.
As someone who lived in Minnesota more than any other place in my lifetime, I‘d really resent the snow being blown around by a twister. :cautious:
 

lizkat

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As someone who lived in Minnesota more than any other place in my lifetime, I‘d really resent the snow being blown around by a twister. :cautious:

Especially if it came with ornaments like pickup trucks, SUVs and refrigerators blown up into the trees...

I keep wondering about what kind of winter is in store around here. Like other regions, we've had anomalous winters on occasion throughout any longer lookback to history. I remember a winter in the mid-90s with some unexpected combos of rainy thaws and then deep freezes that killed a lot of stuff couldn't take the joke of standing water a foot deep. Those were like shallow lakes in everyone's lawns or pastures, water that then turned into ice tourniquets around tree trunks or lower branches of shrubbery. Turned my roadside maples to driftwood.

But we haven't had anything like that since then, not really, maybe some ponding during Jan or Feb thaws and then a deep freeze where there can be residual ice a few inches thick underneath the season's subsequent snowfall. Still, the increasing bouts of cold rainy days lasting into summer are another story, and the winters since then have been steadily on average warmer but with more extreme experiences from year to year.

I always get the same heating fuel gallonage, but the past 10 years have been wild, with some ending up 50 gallons over contract and some 60 gallons under. I'm a creature of habit about winter clothes and how I use the house itself in winter, so that variance is not about me, it's about the weather. I do notice using less heat early in fall and more later into spring, so the shift to a later start and end of summer does seem definite, regardless of a given season's extremes meanwhile.

Those extremes and that shift of season boundaries do seem weird, persistent and so certainly more than just "changeable weather," even with the recounted memories of my next generation back, including tales of the wicked winters of the 1920s.

We sure don't get those sharp drops to -35ºF on post-thaw winter nights any more. Even in my time here, those occasionally would cause the sap in an apple tree to refreeze sometimes, with the sudden crack of what sounded like gunfire, but at daybreak revealed just a fallen and fairly thick branch lying in the snow. On the other hand it's been a long, long time since I got surprised by a mid-August killing frost. I'm almost forgetting what it's like to have a nice stock of green tomatoes to fry or put up into relish at season's end...
 

Huntn

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Well the trick part, not so much the treats.

Maybe after I quit fuming over Manchin on Fox today, I will remember some cool stuff about 2021.

Anyway moving on, what else is on my mind: warmest December I can remember., and another week of it on tap. Phenomenal outlier in my memory, even though we have had generally milder winters for at least the past five years.

Thirty-eight years ago I spent my first Christmas up here. It was 22 below 0ºF with blizzard conditions and 7-foot drifts that morning... naive thing that I was, I hadn't even realized it could snow when it was that cold.

I’ve come to realize there is no real winter in Houston. Well, there is but it is relative. If left to local weather we’d be in the 80s this time of year as we were yesterday before a cold front blew in. The only cold we get is the continuous stream of cold fronts that push down. Without them we would be tropical.
 

Huntn

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yea this will be an interesting period to live through

hopefully human ingenuity will come through and find a solution
They are experimenting with CO2 removal technologies. Fingers crossed:
 

Yoused

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More hurdles against being doing anything semi-meaningful

 

SuperMatt

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More hurdles against being doing anything semi-meaningful

It seems like the SCOTUS is trying to make all regulatory agencies unconstitutional. I am not sure how these rulings can be explained after all the conservative justices promised they would *gasp* NEVER legislate from the bench. They’ve been doing that WAY beyond what any liberals ever did.
 

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Yoused

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What world is the Supreme Court living in?
It is the world in which "freedom" trumps consequences, and the freedom to make a fuck-everyone-else profit is the most precious and treasured right of all, embedded deeply (somewhere) in the Constitution. These one the assholes who hold "freedom of religion" (and the freedom to make huge profit on it) in sacred esteem, and their religion teaches that the divine scripture according to the beloved Great Prophet St. Ronnie – "government bad" – is the most vital teaching of all, above even the misquoted librul words of that gay hippie who got himself crucified all those years ago.
 

Huntn

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It is the world in which "freedom" trumps consequences, and the freedom to make a fuck-everyone-else profit is the most precious and treasured right of all, embedded deeply (somewhere) in the Constitution. These one the assholes who hold "freedom of religion" (and the freedom to make huge profit on it) in sacred esteem, and their religion teaches that the divine scripture according to the beloved Great Prophet St. Ronnie – "government bad" – is the most vital teaching of all, above even the misquoted librul words of that gay hippie who got himself crucified all those years ago.
My freedom at your and our species expense, a real model for failure of the species.
 
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