D.I.Y Planet Cooling

[Michaelangelica]

There must be lots of things we can do on an individual level to slow Global Warming.

There are lots of clever people here so any ideas?

I wonder about the following

1) If we paint roads and roofs white won't this reflect a lot of heat into space?

 

2) See Terra preta Thread. This is one way we can all sequester a bit of carbon.

 

3) A ban on Office (and MacDonald's et al) Plastic plants (see my post in What Bugs You thread suggesting a Terror campaign against PP).We all need to carry a bundle of nice big stickers which say "This is a dead plant please grow a live one" something that sticks with industrial strength glue. Eco-terrorists could attack plastic plants everwhere with these stickers.

Plastic plants cost CO2 and oil in production and don't give anything back.

Why do we need "perfect looking" plants anyway. They are fantasies, illusions of a green space.

 

4) Massive Greening of our cities. streetscapes, offices, rooftop gardens all spilling over with plants soaking up CO2.

 

Any other suggestions?

 

( PS This is worth reading , or listening to, GAIA AND ACCELERATING CLIMATE CHANGE (Science Show: 02/09/2006) http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2006/1726869.htm# )

[CraigD]

There must be lots of things we can do on an individual level to slow Global Warming.

…

Any other suggestions?

Though I didn’t originate the idea, fertilizing phytoplankton with additional nutrients (particularly iron, particularly in the far-south Pacific) strikes me as a promising approach. The carbon-sequestering capacity of these plants is huge, and largely constrained by their nutrient supply. Though it’s kinda a brute-force, engineering-style solution, it’s a straight-forward one, and doesn’t depend on convincing millions of people just getting accustom to a first world lifestyle that they should scale back, or convincing long-time first worlders to give up their wide-screen plasma TVs.

 

This solution is only applicable on an individual level to individuals with some expectation of having influence or involvement with giant engineering projects. For the majority of people who don’t … did I mention plasma TVs?

 

DON’T GET ONE! Or, if you must, get the smallest one you can bear to, and be sure not to leave it turned on when unnecessary. At 0.3 to 0.4 W/inch^2, a typical 55” TV consumes 200-300 W, compared to 125 W for a “standard” 27” TV. A gigantic, 102” Plasma TV can consume up to 2500 W, or about 2/3 of the power a typical US residential circuit can supply!

 

A good quality laptop at, … ehm, laptop distance, is about equivalent in viewing quality to a giant screen across a room, and draws about 20 W.

[Turtle]

...convincing millions of people just getting accustom to a first world lifestyle that they should scale back, or convincing long-time first worlders to give up their wide-screen plasma TVs.

Excellent points Craig! Waste less, want less.:ip: I recently heard a statistic quaoted that most our household electronics when swithced to "Off" continue to use as much as 40% of the current they draw when "On"; that is to say, standby mode, microwave/VCR clocks and/or anything with a remote. I encourage everyone to UNPLUG everything not in use. Not only smallen your carbon footprint, it's money in your pockets folks!!:) ;) :ip: :ip:

 

Michaelangelica

There must be lots of things we can do on an individual level to slow Global Warming.

There are lots of clever people here so any ideas?

3) A ban on Office (and MacDonald's et al) Plastic plants (see my post in What Bugs You thread suggesting a Terror campaign against PP).We all need to carry a bundle of nice big stickers which say "This is a dead plant please grow a live one" something that sticks with industrial strength glue.

I agree on action to stop McDonalds et al wasteful use of plastic in toys. On the plastic plants, I hesitate because real plants need water & you have just exchanged one resource use to another. Ixnay on the ickerstay:hyper: as the stickers & glue waste resources themselves. I suggest writing e-mails to companies you wish to influence. You know, of the lotso' people writing kind? Proven effective method. :ip:

[Mercedes Benzene]

We do need to stop using so much energy...

...or we need to do away with gasoline engines. :)

An article on CNN.com notes that scientists predict a 2-6 degree C increase in global temperature by 2100!

We need to do something right away.

[InfiniteNow]

Is it still bad if you use lots and lots and lots of energy, but you supply it all through solar?

[Turtle]

Is it still bad if you use lots and lots and lots of energy, but you supply it all through solar?

:ip: "Bad" is such a relative term, as is "use". If you are using that energy to sequester carbon, then we will call you good. ;) On the other hand, if you are using it to pump an aquifer dry, then we must call you bad.:ip:

 

I was thinking of hooking a 12Volt auto fan to my solar panel/battery setup & leaving it on stupid just pointing up in the air. If a Butterfly can affect the weather, why not me. I know....I am bad.:ip: Moreover, it's to the bone.:)

[InfiniteNow]

I was thinking of hooking a 12Volt auto fan to my solar panel/battery setup & leaving it on stupid just pointing up in the air. If a Butterfly can affect the weather, why not me. I know....I am bad.;) Moreover, it's to the bone.:)

:ip:

LOL. Good points, all. Basically, my question was because I have a plasma tv. Is it still negatively impacting the environment (per Craigs well articulated post) if I use solar energy to give it the juice it drinks?

[Michaelangelica]

Though I didn’t originate the idea, fertilizing phytoplankton with additional nutrients (particularly iron, particularly in the far-south Pacific) strikes me as a promising approach.

The carbon-sequestering capacity of these plants is huge, and largely constrained by their nutrient supply.

TVs.

Fascinating idea.

How would it be done in practice?

What about sewerage? Would that be a good, cheap, plentiful solution?

 

One problem with DDT(and similar) is that it floats on the top micron of the water and interferes with phytoplankton's reproductive capacity.(See DDT sould it be used (sic) Thread). Because of this (floating) you need very little DDT (etc) to do a lot of damage as the chemical is kept 'cheek by jowel' with the phytoplankton (Multiply area of sea surface by one micron then throw in trillions of tons of DDT type compounds==?)

I was amazed to read that phytoplankton are our major source of oxygen so you wonder what contribution DDT has, and is, making to global warming.(?)

 

Phytoplankton seems to be 'Below the Radar' of most Earth Scientists.

[Michaelangelica]

 

I agree on action to stop McDonalds et al wasteful use of plastic in toys. On the plastic plants, I hesitate because real plants need water & you have just exchanged one resource use to another.

 

Yes you do use water but at least the plants transpire this back into the atmosphere. (You can save 17% water by using Terra preta potting soils see that thread).

There is some suggestion that plant exhudations actually cause rain. (see Weather thread

So the increasing lack of vegetation here (which is nearly as bad as Brazil for de-forestation) and worldwide might go some way to explaining the many droughts the earth is experiencing.

(Locally we are down to 15% water in the local dams, Sydney dams are down to 45%,

97% of the state is "Drought Declared" as the nation is going though its worst drought in history.)

 

the stickers & glue waste resources themselves. I suggest writing e-mails to companies you wish to influence. You know, of the lotso' people writing kind? Proven effective method.

The stickers would only be a short term device to draw public attention to the issue.

No one reads emails anymore. You need something that gets you on the news. What about kidnapping plastic plants and a public burning? (Would burning the owners of the plants release less CO2 than burning the plants?):eek_big:

[CraigD]

Basically, my question was because I have a plasma tv. Is it still negatively impacting the environment (per Craigs well articulated post) if I use solar energy to give it the juice it drinks?

No. You can have a plasma screen the size of a house (if you can afford to get a manufacturer to build one – I think the biggest one you can buy today is 102”) as long as the electricity to power it is generated from a clean source like solar, with effective zero ecological impact. Semiconductor manufacturing is roughly as ecologically damaging as glass manufacturing, so a big TV has roughly the same impact as an equal mass of glass bottles, electrical wires, and plastic.

 

Unless you want to confine your viewing to daylight hours, though, you’d best have a big energy storage system along with your solar panels – a 400 W TV would need nearly a 200 kg lead-acid battery to run all night.

[CraigD]

Though I didn’t originate the idea, fertilizing phytoplankton with additional nutrients (particularly iron, particularly in the far-south Pacific) strikes me as a promising approach.

The carbon-sequestering capacity of these plants is huge, and largely constrained by their nutrient supply.

Fascinating idea.

How would it be done in practice?

It was done in 1993 on a small, experimental scale, by a team lead by Richard Barber and Ken Johnson. They dumped about 500 kg of iron sulfate over a 65 km^2 patch of iron-poor ocean about 400 km southwest of the Galapagos Islands. By their measurements and estimates, this resulted in about 2,500,000 additional kg of carbon being sequestered by the phytoplankton in 2 weeks, the equivalent of about 100 full-grown redwoods.

What about sewerage? Would that be a good, cheap, plentiful solution?

I don’t think sewage contains much iron, so I don’t thinks so.

 

Fortunately, iron is a cheap, plentiful, easy to find mineral. About 5% of the Earth’s crust is iron.

 

Some scientists don’t think ocean iron seeding would work. Others worry that it’s viability could be used as an excuse to other greenhouse gas reduction measures. It’s certainly, IMHO, worth serious study.

 

A few articles on Barber and Johnson experiment: http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/iron.htm; http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.11/ecohacking.html; http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0609_040609_carbonsink.html.

 

 

One problem with DDT(and similar) is that it floats on the top micron of the water and interferes with phytoplankton's reproductive capacity.(See DDT sould it be used (sic) Thread). Because of this (floating) you need very little DDT (etc) to do a lot of damage as the chemical is kept 'cheek by jowel' with the phytoplankton (Multiply area of sea surface by one micron then throw in trillions of tons of DDT type compounds==?)

I was amazed to read that phytoplankton are our major source of oxygen so you wonder what contribution DDT has, and is, making to global warming.(?)

I’d never considered this. I hope that this effect is confined to costal waters, and that these DDT films break up, poisoning only a small area of phytoplankton, before reaching the open ocean.

[Michaelangelica]

While we are looking at electrical things ; someone, on hypography, was looking into whether low-energy lamps were net savers of CO2.

Does anyone know if the production of the lamps costs more in CO2 than they save?

My local electricity authority is giving away six for free. (Unfortunately most of my light fittings are recessed and I don't think you can use them in recessed fittings.).

 

also

How much power do you save by not leaving TVs on stand by mode?

 

Thanks for the tip re iron and phytoplankton. That is a pretty impressive experiment. Why Iron? What does it do? Half of western Australia is made of iron. We could easily chip a few bits off into the sea.:eek_big: I will go and read the links you gave now.

 

I don't think DDT ever breaks up into much; DDE perhaps, which is just as bad.

It just spreads out. "Witholding periods" are the time it takes to spread out off your tomatoes so you don't get too letal a dose, not the time it takes to break down. (The half life for most CHs is 18 years -we think.) If it was biodegradable I wouldn't object to it as much.

I have a couple of research papers on this if you are interested although most of my knowledge of this deleterious effect of Chlorinated Hydrocarbons on plankton comes from concerned and informed chemists. You would think that "Round-Up" would be worse than pesticide designed to kill bugs not "Grass -with-Attitude":) = Phytoplankton

 

also

does anyone know how Carbon Credits work?

[Boerseun]

I like the plastic plant bit.

 

Just as a platform to get your message across, in order to heighten public awareness of the issue:

 

Walk around with your trusty MacGuyver-style swiss army knife. Whenever you see a plastic plant, look around if anybody sees you and then, if nobody in the store is watching, do some 'pruning', if you catch my drift. And then leave a hand-written note stuck to the plastic stump telling everybody and their dog why you did what you did.

 

I like!

 

A few hypographically inspired prunings later, all over the world where our fellow hypographers are, and we'll start a new trend! A plant-friendly meme, so to speak! If you don't do this, you'll never have sex again in your life, and your career and personal life will be ruined by BAD LUCK FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!!! Pass it on!!! I do want to have sex again, and I don't want bad luck for the rest of my life. Therefore, I will snip a plastic plant!

[Michaelangelica]

I like the plastic plant bit.

 

Just as a platform to get your message across, in order to heighten public awareness of the issue:

 

Walk around with your trusty MacGuyver-style swiss army knife. Whenever you see a plastic plant, look around if anybody sees you and then, if nobody in the store is watching, do some 'pruning', if you catch my drift. And then leave a hand-written note stuck to the plastic stump telling everybody and their dog why you did what you did.

 

I like!

 

A few hypographically inspired prunings later, all over the world where our fellow hypographers are, and we'll start a new trend! A plant-friendly meme, so to speak! If you don't do this, you'll never have sex again in your life, and your career and personal life will be ruined by BAD LUCK FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!!! Pass it on!!! I do want to have sex again, and I don't want bad luck for the rest of my life. Therefore, I will snip a plastic plant!

 

LOL :eek_big:

I LOVE IT

You are more evil than I am.

Invoking bad karma, like chain letters, BRILLIANT!

Anyone know a friendly, generous printer?

Now where did I put my secateurs.. . .

[Turtle]

Basically, my question was because I have a plasma tv. Is it still negatively impacting the environment (per Craigs well articulated post) if I use solar energy to give it the juice it drinks?

 

Any use of energy is affecting the environment, but it's up to you to tweek the effectiveness of you own use. If you make your own juice, you have the right to use it as you please. Unplug your TV when not in use, and incorporate it into your heating/cooling system when it's on. :doh: Plasma rules!!!:hihi:

[CraigD]

Does anyone know if the production of the [compact florescent?] lamps costs more in CO2 than they save?

Not even close, I calculate.

 

The most difficult stuff to melt (and thus form) in a compact florescent is the glass, at about 1000° C. My eyeball guesstimate of the mass of one (I’m looking at a 14 W “ultra mini spiral lamp”, the last in a 6 pack) is about 100 g. The specific heat of typical glass is about 0.67 J/g/K, so an efficient furnace should require about 1000 K * 100 g * .67 J/g/K = 67000 J to make one of these lamps. It draws 14 W, so uses as much energy as it took to manufacture it in 67000 J / 14 W = about 4800 s = about 80 minutes. The bulb has a rated life of 10,000 hrs, so the total energy it will use making light over its lifetime is 10000 hr * 3600 s/hr * 14 W = 500,000,000 J, so it takes about 0.02% the energy to make as it uses over its lifetime making light.

 

It replaces a 60 W incandescent bulb, which takes about the same energy to make as the florescent. It has a rated life of 1,500 hrs. I’ll need about 6.7 of these to last the 10,000 hrs of the compact florescent. They’ll use 10000 hr *3600 s/hr *60 W = 2,160,000,000 J.

 

So, with the energy saved by a single compact florescent we could make (2160000000 J – 500000000 J)/67000 J = nearly 25,000 compact florescents over a roughly 7 year period

 

According to several references I googled, power generation in the US releases between 0.0001 and 0.0002 g/J of generated energy, so powering a compact florescent bulb over its 7 year life releases about 500000000 J * 0.0001 g/J = 5 kg, far more than manufacturing it would release even if it were made of pure carbon and half burned in making each lamp

My local electricity authority is giving away six for free. (Unfortunately most of my light fittings are recessed and I don't think you can use them in recessed fittings.).

I use them in recessed fixtures. The little spiral lights are about 75% as long and 60% wide as the bulb they replace, and produce less heat, so there’s no problem.

 

After some complaints that the lighting in areas of my basement was too “flat” and white, I added some thin plastic “gells” to give them color. The florescents are so cool, I don’t need to worry about melting the plastic.

 

I’ve only noted 2 drawbacks with replacing incandescent with compact fluorescents

• In fixtures in which the bulb is visible, they look funny
  
• They take as long as 10 seconds to produce maximum light, so some places, such as near stair in dark areas that you enter with your eyes adjusted to bright daylight, you may have to pause for them to be bright enough for you to see well
  

How much power do you save by not leaving TVs on stand by mode?

According to this very nice c/net article, it varies a lot from model to model, from just a few W, to nearly 20.

 

:fly: These questions and articles point out that most people trying to save energy are hampered by the lack of published practical power consumption ratings (the ones usually published are maximums, and of little comparison value), and convenient devices to measure household electric current. A simple gadget you could take to a store and measure the power of consumer electonics before you buy them would be great for the conservation-focused consumer, but I’ve never seen one. Just having a easily viewed power meter for your home, so you could experiment with switching devices on and off and observing your total home power, would be very handy, but I’ve never seen one that wasn’t expensive, hard to install, and intended for commercial use. When I do such measuring, I have to go outside and time the revolutions on my power company electric meter using a stopwatch, an inconvenient, low-tech, but accurate and effective technique.

Thanks for the tip re iron and phytoplankton. That is a pretty impressive experiment. Why Iron? What does it do?

I don’t know the details, only that iron is important to their metabolism, and theories suggest that they rarely get as much as they need for maximum metabolism. It’s a complicated and controversial subject.

[Turtle]

Not even close, I calculate.

 

 

:fly: These questions and articles point out that most people trying to save energy are hampered by the lack of published practical power consumption ratings (the ones usually published are maximums, and of little comparison value), and convenient devices to measure household electric current. A simple gadget you could take to a store and measure the power of consumer electonics before you buy them would be great for the conservation-focused consumer, but I’ve never seen one.

I love it when you calculate Craig! :hihi:

 

Knock, and I'll open the door.:naughty: (did you know your doorbell system is constantly on regardless of whether someone rings it or not? The transformer that supplies the low voltage AC is usually hardwired into the house wiring>!:eek: )

Whatever the matter, here is your meter:

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/measure.html