Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Discussion in 'SBAF Blogs' started by purr1n, Dec 26, 2018.

  1. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I wouldn't be so sure about that.

    N20 are 3-10% of greenhouse gases compared to 77-85% CO2 (depending upon country, year, source of data, etc.). However, N2O has 300x (don't know if this is true, but that's what many climate change sites on the Internet claim - probably alarmist and exaggerated) the heat trapping characteristic of CO2.

    N2O is also a ozone depleting gas like CFCs, causes acid rain, etc.

    It's paid less attention to compared to CO2 because because it's hard to get figures, and as @wormcycle mentioned, there are entrenched interests: German auto firms stance toward favoring diesel, the entire world liking to use fertilizer in farming, etc.
     
  2. mscott58

    mscott58 Friend

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    The chemist in me (before I added engineering to it) feels a need to point out that N2O is not the same as NO2. Please feel free to ignore if you know this and/or don't care!

    N2O is nitrous oxide aka laughing gas, that you get at the dentist or that you inject into your engine if you're a F&F wanna-be. This one is nasty in the environment, but doesn't come too much from cars, mostly from natural biologic processes, although many of these - e.g. permafrost melting, animal manure, fertilizers - are impacted/accelerated by man/machine, and we therefore contribute to around 40% of it's production. It's much lower in concentration, but as @purr1n pointed out it is much higher in impact on a molecule per molecule comparison.

    NO2 is nitrogen dioxide, which along with NO (nitrogen oxide) is what most people call NOX (although some also throw N2O into the mix of NOX as well) and is created by cars, especially diesels. NO2 is bad in that it reacts with other things to form ozone, which is again a nasty thing to the environment.

    All of them are various shades of bad and should be controlled, but just wanted to point out the difference.

    Taking off my chemistry hat now...
     
  3. Taverius

    Taverius Smells like sausages

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    Yall can stop raging against automobile diesel engines, bad as they are* - what they output pales in comparison to all the industrial diesels out there, and those can't be replaced with electric or catalysed petrol engines.

    * and they're pretty bad, and the fine particulate they make is worse for you than the NOx quite possibly, and likely more immediately, but catalyzers are required by law while particulate filters aren't because the latter only work if you take regular highway speed trips of at least 20-30m.
     
  4. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Let's face it. We're all in Snowpiercer situation. Greta Thunberg, who sits near the front of the train, just doesn't know it.
    [​IMG]
     
  5. Tachikoma

    Tachikoma Almost "Made"

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    Isn't this exactly what Greta called for? Immediate and drastic action (coerced in this case) on climate change?
     
  6. Biodegraded

    Biodegraded Friend

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    Also have to remember CH4 (methane) which has many times the effect of CO2 - BUT its lifetime in the atmosphere, like that of NO2, is much shorter. So while these other gases are certainly a problem, the long term issue is CO2 buildup.
     
  7. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Here's Greta future the school teacher on the Snowpiercer.
    [​IMG]
     
  8. mscott58

    mscott58 Friend

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    Had never even heard of Snowpiercer before this thread and now it's on my Prime Video cue! Thanks

    PS - Given I haven't seen it yet, but from the summary I read I'm not exactly sure if I buy the concept of the remnants of humanity somehow ending up on an around the world train (who maintains the track?) but I'll suspend disbelief for the sake of the story
     
  9. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    (the following words are inspired by Psalmanazar and beer...imitation, flatterey, and all that)

    Greta Thunberg should go back to concentrating on finishing her P&J and Cheetos while she dreams about her first kiss. Since when did children become public moralists and examples for adults with real experience? Fact is we are still in the tail end of an ice age and CO2 levels are too damn low. It's not normal for Greenland to have a mile thick ice cap on it, and as even Greta understands normal = good. The present climate is out of whack, too damn cold, and not normal, which = bad. Throughout most of the "Age of the Dinosaurs-saurs-saurs....", the climate in the Arctic Circle was equivalent to Portland today according to the geological/fossil record. Maybe that's why most in Portland have their panties in a wad, they don't want those in the Arctic Circle to have what they have. Plain human envy does explain many things about Portland. Snapping turtles the size of my house = good. Tiny little snapping turtles shivering in cesspools in Portland that are so common in this current ice age = bad. I am looking forward to next month when I fire up my 50,000 BTU pool heater that runs on clean burning Natural Gas. I just wish I could convert it to burn diesel...I will have to look into that...
     
  10. Biodegraded

    Biodegraded Friend

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    ^ Heh. I acknowledge the spirit of your post and wouldn't necessarily disagree about Greta or Portlandians. But regarding climate and ice cover, no. The present 'normal' really is a glacial climate, thanks to the dispositions of the continents vs the poles. We're not in the tank and off an ice age, we're between the ladlast one and the next one - but the rate at which we're changing the forcing factors means we'll get hot much faster than natural cooling would kick in. I know it's tedious to keep reading this shit - and even more tedious to listen to holier than thou wankers telling you how to behave.

    Don't want to do this myself - I might come across as preachy, but my bag is more about hoping people will accept the facts than about trying to convince people to act in a certain way, because that's a value judgement that people will respond to differently.
     
  11. Tachikoma

    Tachikoma Almost "Made"

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    The responsiility for this state of affairs lies with the adults rather than the child.

    Anyway, excuse my naivete, but hasn't the coronavirus pandemic shown us that the global economy could be trimmed by a sizeable amount without having a significant impact on essentials like food, water and land resources?
     
  12. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Since always. And so it should be.

    When I listen to some of the songs of the late 60s and early 70s (my period: I'm not excluding others) I am listening to young people (maybe not children, but still very young) pontificating on on life, relationships and the future of the world. There were inspired poets, to whom age is not a factor. There were also those to whom I listen, fifty years later, and think Heck, he was just a kid, WTF did he think he knew. Great voice, yes; great music, yes; but qualified to teach the world? Not so much. Still glad the songs got sung, though.

    Every teenager thinks they know better than their parent's generation, and it takes longer than a numeric shift into twenties to fix that --- although that age change also brings with it hard doses of reality like earning a living and feeding oneself.

    --- Message from an increasingly BOF! (Boring Old Fart)
     
  13. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    It's barely started.
     
  14. Taverius

    Taverius Smells like sausages

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    Heh. Oh that's cute! You think the worst is past! :cool:
     
  15. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    The virus will fizzle out eventually. Some people were talking about travel plans at the weekend, "...if international travel is still a thing this time next year." This time next year we might well be on to the next flu superbug.

    OR, a sizeable proportion of us will be waking up dead soon. Being an unhealthy nearly-seventy-year-old, I'm unlikely to among those left to work out what to do next. What to do?
     
  16. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    Do not forget about the Children crusade, according to one of the authors: "remains one of a series of social explosions, through which medieval men and women—and children too—found release".
    Those medieval people would feel right at home in 21st century.
    Did not end well, the crusade (two crusades actually) did not get even close to Holy Land, and many children were tricked by the merchants and sold to slavery.
    I sincerely hope it will not happen to Greta, although, in a way, it already did happen.
    But she appears to be smarter: unlike child crusaders in 13 century, she did not expect the sea to divide before her, instead she got herself pretty high tec carbon fiber sailboat to go to the UN summit.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2020
  17. Tachikoma

    Tachikoma Almost "Made"

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    Hardly, and also not the point I was trying to make. Yes, we've lost a fair amount of economic productivity to the virus (and will continue to lose more), but how much of what we've lost is truly essential for human society? How much of it is just plain old fat?

    As for the coronavirus pandemic itself, I think coronavirus infections will become normalized somehow, just like the flu. We'll just have to live with a slightly higher chance of dying at random.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2020
  18. Brause

    Brause Friend

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    Hmm, good luck. The spread and death rate follow strict mathematical equations...the cases double every 2-4 days...at the present rate, this doesn't look very good at all.
     
  19. Mithrandir41

    Mithrandir41 Friend

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    Ummm... It was really well built!
     
  20. mscott58

    mscott58 Friend

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    Ha! Yeah. I actually did watch it. Entertaining for sure, but the parts where they blow through complete avalanche falls on the tracks was a bit of a head-scratcher.

    Also was really hard to think of Ed Harris's character in the movie as not being The Man In Black from Westworld...
     

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