The point that I think needs to be made is that we keep hearing that somehow global warming is causing the Amazon basin to catch fire, or alternatively that the burnout is destroying the Amazon rain forest and eliminating a huge CO2 sink and oxygen source, and I'm not at all certain that either is factually correct. There's a map showing the location of the fires, and it appears that more of them are in the Mato Grosso area than in the Amazon basin. There's a reason. Brazil's agricultural areas are primarily in the Mato Grosso rather than the Amazon basin. They don't get a winter to kill off of bugs and pests. Therefore they have to burn off their fields each year to keep pests down. I'm reading that the vast majority of these fires are the annual burn-off. That makes sense because the photos and videos I've seen primarily show fires in areas surrounded by fields, not fires in rain forest areas. I'm quite certain that some of it is burning off Amazon rain forest, some intentional, some not.
Some of the rain forest is being converted to agriculture each year. It is a very expensive and time- and resource-consuming process, and it results in less than optimum quality farming conditions, so they are the world's highest-cost producer. But the people there need to eat, so they do whatever they can. Environmentalism is a rich man's game; when you don't have anything to eat or wear, or a place to live, you really don't worry too much about what the temperature of the planet will be in 100 years. I have read that the Amazon basin produces something like 20% of the planet's oxygen, suggesting that burning it all away could be catastrophic. But I have also read that the number is closer to 6%, that it's obviously not all going away, and that the agricultural production replacing it will produce a similar quantity, or more, of oxygen (and therefore absorb a comparable amount of CO2). I don't know which statements are true or false, and I have not been able to find any definitive conclusion.
(08-24-2019 01:00 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]Speaking of leadership, despite our withdrawal from Paris, we still seem to be leading the world in reducing greenhouse gases. We never ratified Kyoto, but I believe that while it was in effect we reduced our greenhouse gases more than anybody else, and may very well have been the only country to achieve our Kyoto goals. The same thing appears to be happening with Paris, from what I have been able to find. I think a reasonable policy is to say, "Hey, instead of signing feel-good sham agreements, we are going to go out and actually reduce our greenhouse gases. How about the rest of you joining in?"
You keep saying that but you're wrong. You're using old data. We did have a 3-year decline from 2015-17 and led in overall emission decline but not percentage. But sadly, we went up 3.4 percent in 2018 (our 2nd largest increase in 20 years) and are projected to have another increase in 2019. And this link shows that transportation is a bigger cause of emissions than power, so we're going to have to figure out a way to get people to drive less. And that's not going to be easy to do in this country. https://www.vox.com/2019/1/8/18174082/us...sions-2018
That's one group's opinion. I've seen others that say the opposite, not so much about 2018 and 2019, but primarily that the reduction since 1990 has been greater than that states. It's an uncertain target, and slight variations in methodology can produce differing results.
ETA: For example, this chart from EPA shows significant decline since 2005, and current levels back at about 1990 levels, which I think was the goal of either Kyoto or Paris (not going to look it up, you can and will correct me if I'm wrong). https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventorye...onsect/all
That graph (which again stops at 2017) shows we're doing well in reducing the electricity and industry emissions, but horrible in transportation (+22 pct.) and agriculture (+9 pct). I think we need to work harder on trying to get employees working at home and getting incentives to use mass transit where available.
But we are doing well in total, which is what really matters. Of course, the big reason is that fracking has produced a lot of cheap natural gas which is replacing coal. There is also a lot more wind in places like Texas that have deregulated electric utilities. Deregulation is absolutely essential for the economics of renewable energies to work. Texas now leads the US in wind generation.
Drove to Corpus down I-37 2 weeks ago. When we passed the giant wind farm just north of Corpus every single wind turbine as far as we could see (100s) was dead stopped. Figured short-term problem, right? Drove back up I-37 five days later. All wind turbines still dead stopped. All I could think was thank goodness for fossil fuels, and what a massive waste of capital.
As an aside, Dr Michael Mann (the climate change Michael Mann, not the Miami Vice and the movie 'Heat' Michael Mann) lost a defamation suit against fellow scientist, Tim Ball, in British Columbia, the subject of the defamation being centered on Mann's famous 'Hockey Stick' graph.
Now, for fairness' sake this dos not mean that either Dr Mann's 'Hockey Stick' is right or wrong; nor that Dr Ball's counter 'climate map' is right or wrong.
The pertinent part to me is *why* and *how* Dr Mann lost the suit. Dr. Ball claimed the defense of 'truth' in defense of his very charged comments about Mann's 'Hockey Stick' (i.e. Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.”)
Accordingly, Dr Ball requested, and the court ordered discovery on *all* of Mann's data, methodologies in the form of source code, and end and intermediate statistical results ('R results', or regression model statistics) for the famous 'Hockey Stick'.
Apparently Dr. Mann refused to turn over such data. I cannot find anything on the source code issue, and what I did find on it seems to indicate that that was not turned over either. In the light of such non-performance, the British Columbia court not only dismissed Mann's defamation lawsuit, but ordered him to pay Dr. Ball's defense costs.
It should be noted that Mann has seemingly *never* put forth the raw data, methodologies, nor the results of the statistical regressions analyses on this landmark icon.
(08-24-2019 02:16 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: [ -> ]You keep saying that but you're wrong. You're using old data. We did have a 3-year decline from 2015-17 and led in overall emission decline but not percentage. But sadly, we went up 3.4 percent in 2018 (our 2nd largest increase in 20 years) and are projected to have another increase in 2019. And this link shows that transportation is a bigger cause of emissions than power, so we're going to have to figure out a way to get people to drive less. And that's not going to be easy to do in this country. https://www.vox.com/2019/1/8/18174082/us...sions-2018
That's one group's opinion. I've seen others that say the opposite, not so much about 2018 and 2019, but primarily that the reduction since 1990 has been greater than that states. It's an uncertain target, and slight variations in methodology can produce differing results.
ETA: For example, this chart from EPA shows significant decline since 2005, and current levels back at about 1990 levels, which I think was the goal of either Kyoto or Paris (not going to look it up, you can and will correct me if I'm wrong). https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventorye...onsect/all
That graph (which again stops at 2017) shows we're doing well in reducing the electricity and industry emissions, but horrible in transportation (+22 pct.) and agriculture (+9 pct). I think we need to work harder on trying to get employees working at home and getting incentives to use mass transit where available.
But we are doing well in total, which is what really matters. Of course, the big reason is that fracking has produced a lot of cheap natural gas which is replacing coal. There is also a lot more wind in places like Texas that have deregulated electric utilities. Deregulation is absolutely essential for the economics of renewable energies to work. Texas now leads the US in wind generation.
Drove to Corpus down I-37 2 weeks ago. When we passed the giant wind farm just north of Corpus every single wind turbine as far as we could see (100s) was dead stopped. Figured short-term problem, right? Drove back up I-37 five days later. All wind turbines still dead stopped. All I could think was thank goodness for fossil fuels, and what a massive waste of capital.
Using an anecdote as evidence of the unreliability of wind isn’t super compelling when wind was the 2nd largest producer of energy in the state of Texas for the first half of the year (behind natural gas).
(08-25-2019 09:54 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote: [ -> ]Using an anecdote as evidence of the unreliability of wind isn’t super compelling when wind was the 2nd largest producer of energy in the state of Texas for the first half of the year (behind natural gas). https://www.kut.org/post/texas-has-gener...o-far-year
I make that drive quite a bit right now for work and see the turbines near Corpus churning frequently.
Two points:
1) The amount of wind energy in Texas is a direct consequence of te deregulation of electricity rates. You can't really have wind or solar in a rate-regulated environment. Because...
2) Wind is in fact unreliable. It cannot be counted on for firm base load unless and until we find a far better way to store electricity. Therefore, you always need backup firm capacity. And rate regulators are generally loathe to allow redundant capacity into rate base under the "used and useful" standard.
(08-24-2019 02:32 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]That's one group's opinion. I've seen others that say the opposite, not so much about 2018 and 2019, but primarily that the reduction since 1990 has been greater than that states. It's an uncertain target, and slight variations in methodology can produce differing results.
ETA: For example, this chart from EPA shows significant decline since 2005, and current levels back at about 1990 levels, which I think was the goal of either Kyoto or Paris (not going to look it up, you can and will correct me if I'm wrong). https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventorye...onsect/all
That graph (which again stops at 2017) shows we're doing well in reducing the electricity and industry emissions, but horrible in transportation (+22 pct.) and agriculture (+9 pct). I think we need to work harder on trying to get employees working at home and getting incentives to use mass transit where available.
But we are doing well in total, which is what really matters. Of course, the big reason is that fracking has produced a lot of cheap natural gas which is replacing coal. There is also a lot more wind in places like Texas that have deregulated electric utilities. Deregulation is absolutely essential for the economics of renewable energies to work. Texas now leads the US in wind generation.
Drove to Corpus down I-37 2 weeks ago. When we passed the giant wind farm just north of Corpus every single wind turbine as far as we could see (100s) was dead stopped. Figured short-term problem, right? Drove back up I-37 five days later. All wind turbines still dead stopped. All I could think was thank goodness for fossil fuels, and what a massive waste of capital.
Using an anecdote as evidence of the unreliability of wind isn’t super compelling when wind was the 2nd largest producer of energy in the state of Texas for the first half of the year (behind natural gas).
(08-24-2019 07:38 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]The point that I think needs to be made is that we keep hearing that somehow global warming is causing the Amazon basin to catch fire, or alternatively that the burnout is destroying the Amazon rain forest and eliminating a huge CO2 sink and oxygen source, and I'm not at all certain that either is factually correct. There's a map showing the location of the fires, and it appears that more of them are in the Mato Grosso area than in the Amazon basin. There's a reason. Brazil's agricultural areas are primarily in the Mato Grosso rather than the Amazon basin. They don't get a winter to kill off of bugs and pests. Therefore they have to burn off their fields each year to keep pests down. I'm reading that the vast majority of these fires are the annual burn-off. That makes sense because the photos and videos I've seen primarily show fires in areas surrounded by fields, not fires in rain forest areas. I'm quite certain that some of it is burning off Amazon rain forest, some intentional, some not.
Some of the rain forest is being converted to agriculture each year. It is a very expensive and time- and resource-consuming process, and it results in less than optimum quality farming conditions, so they are the world's highest-cost producer. But the people there need to eat, so they do whatever they can. Environmentalism is a rich man's game; when you don't have anything to eat or wear, or a place to live, you really don't worry too much about what the temperature of the planet will be in 100 years. I have read that the Amazon basin produces something like 20% of the planet's oxygen, suggesting that burning it all away could be catastrophic. But I have also read that the number is closer to 6%, that it's obviously not all going away, and that the agricultural production replacing it will produce a similar quantity, or more, of oxygen (and therefore absorb a comparable amount of CO2). I don't know which statements are true or false, and I have not been able to find any definitive conclusion.
I see from a post right now by Super Fly Cat in the Kyra Spin Room that says
As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. (The Amazon spreads across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and parts of other countries.) Though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to estimates from the Global Fire Emissions Database, a research project that compiles and analyzes NASA data.
So while it's good I guess that the fire activity is average, this seems to conflict your belief that the fires are mostly in Mato Grosso. That link he puts in there does say the fire season in Brazil is now until November, so let's hope it stays average.
And I don't believe I've heard once that global warming is causing the fires. We pretty much all know that humans cause the fires, whether by accident or on purpose. Unless they're in the midst of a significant drought, you can safely assume the majority of fires are agriculturally related.
Illinois Republican Joe Walsh announced today he's officially running for President in the Republican primaries. Based on his track record, he's probably not going to make much more of a dent than Bill Weld. But I'd say that Trump already has more in-party opposition than Obama faced in 2012 or Bush in 2004. Plus it allows me to post this video.
(08-24-2019 03:03 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: [ -> ]That graph (which again stops at 2017) shows we're doing well in reducing the electricity and industry emissions, but horrible in transportation (+22 pct.) and agriculture (+9 pct). I think we need to work harder on trying to get employees working at home and getting incentives to use mass transit where available.
But we are doing well in total, which is what really matters. Of course, the big reason is that fracking has produced a lot of cheap natural gas which is replacing coal. There is also a lot more wind in places like Texas that have deregulated electric utilities. Deregulation is absolutely essential for the economics of renewable energies to work. Texas now leads the US in wind generation.
Drove to Corpus down I-37 2 weeks ago. When we passed the giant wind farm just north of Corpus every single wind turbine as far as we could see (100s) was dead stopped. Figured short-term problem, right? Drove back up I-37 five days later. All wind turbines still dead stopped. All I could think was thank goodness for fossil fuels, and what a massive waste of capital.
Using an anecdote as evidence of the unreliability of wind isn’t super compelling when wind was the 2nd largest producer of energy in the state of Texas for the first half of the year (behind natural gas).
I make that drive quite a bit right now for work and see the turbines near Corpus churning frequently.
Were they stopped due to lack of wind?
The wind farms across Texas are used typically in either a peak load capacity or 'quasi baseload' capacity. But when compared to gas-fired baseload, wind can be onlined and offlined much easier than shutting down a gas-fired turbine production.
The CC wind farms are especially geared to more of the 'quasi' baseload work; the simple fact is that the sea winds are damn near always there in some form.
The issue of 'deading' that particular farm was probably more of a function of medium term load adjustment than anything else.
(08-24-2019 07:38 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]The point that I think needs to be made is that we keep hearing that somehow global warming is causing the Amazon basin to catch fire, or alternatively that the burnout is destroying the Amazon rain forest and eliminating a huge CO2 sink and oxygen source, and I'm not at all certain that either is factually correct. There's a map showing the location of the fires, and it appears that more of them are in the Mato Grosso area than in the Amazon basin. There's a reason. Brazil's agricultural areas are primarily in the Mato Grosso rather than the Amazon basin. They don't get a winter to kill off of bugs and pests. Therefore they have to burn off their fields each year to keep pests down. I'm reading that the vast majority of these fires are the annual burn-off. That makes sense because the photos and videos I've seen primarily show fires in areas surrounded by fields, not fires in rain forest areas. I'm quite certain that some of it is burning off Amazon rain forest, some intentional, some not.
Some of the rain forest is being converted to agriculture each year. It is a very expensive and time- and resource-consuming process, and it results in less than optimum quality farming conditions, so they are the world's highest-cost producer. But the people there need to eat, so they do whatever they can. Environmentalism is a rich man's game; when you don't have anything to eat or wear, or a place to live, you really don't worry too much about what the temperature of the planet will be in 100 years. I have read that the Amazon basin produces something like 20% of the planet's oxygen, suggesting that burning it all away could be catastrophic. But I have also read that the number is closer to 6%, that it's obviously not all going away, and that the agricultural production replacing it will produce a similar quantity, or more, of oxygen (and therefore absorb a comparable amount of CO2). I don't know which statements are true or false, and I have not been able to find any definitive conclusion.
I see from a post right now by Super Fly Cat in the Kyra Spin Room that says
"As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. (The Amazon spreads across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and parts of other countries.) Though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to estimates from the Global Fire Emissions Database, a research project that compiles and analyzes NASA data."
So while it's good I guess that the fire activity is average, this seems to conflict your belief that the fires are mostly in Mato Grosso. That link he puts in there does say the fire season in Brazil is now until November, so let's hope it stays average.
And I don't believe I've heard once that global warming is causing the fires. We pretty much all know that humans cause the fires, whether by accident or on purpose. Unless they're in the midst of a significant drought, you can safely assume the majority of fires are agriculturally related.
I did not state an affirmative belief that most of the fires were mostly in Mato Grosso, I simply eyeballed a photo and graphic.
The comment about global warming causing the fires was in response to Bill Maher's truly despicable comments about the death of David Koch, where he said something to the effect that we had ignored global warming until the Amazon is burning.
This is something that goes on every year. Overall, it's about average this year. Why has it not been an issue every year? Burning would actually be a pretty inefficient way to clear rainforest because after the fire you'd still have a bunch of residue to clean up. And the land that they clear is pretty poor farmland, with the highest cost of production in the world. They probably do some of that, simply because they are trying to do whatever they can to get food, clothing, and shelter.
And that brings me to the larger point which you continue to ignore. Environmentalism is a rich man's game. When you don't have food, or clothing, or shelter, what the temperature of the planet is going to be in 100 years is not a major concern. The problem is that our efforts to do anything about global warming are going to fail spectacularly if we can't get the developing world onboard. So how do we propose to do that?
Expanding on that a bit, it's sort of like the story The Three Little Pigs. We're the pig who can build his house out of stone, China is the pig building his house out of sticks and India is the pig building his house out of straw (don't even ask me what Africa is doing). Climate change is the Big Bad Wolf. I think eventually the other pigs will come running to us for help. It may be too late by then, but that's quite a bit down the road.
(08-25-2019 11:14 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: [ -> ]I think all we can do is lead by example.
And nobody is going to follow unless we can give them some tangible up front benefit. I think we can do that, but it's going to take BHAG solutions, not feel good fluff. When you don't have food, clothing, and/or shelter, you don't care very much about what the average temperature of the planet will be in 100 years.
(08-25-2019 11:14 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: [ -> ]Expanding on that a bit, it's sort of like the story The Three Little Pigs. We're the pig who can build his house out of stone, China is the pig building his house out of sticks and India is the pig building his house out of straw (don't even ask me what Africa is doing). Climate change is the Big Bad Wolf. I think eventually the other pigs will come running to us for help. It may be too late by then, but that's quite a bit down the road.
And in that analogy, what we are saying to China and India (and Africa) now is, "Go ahead and keep building your houses out of sticks and straw, and in the end we will rescue you." And it can't work like that.
I have seen some reports that apparently NASA has detected rising temperatures on Mars and another planet or two. I am not sure about the reliability of those reports. It would seem that if they were truly reliable then this would be a much bigger story. And I have some reservations about NASA’s or anyone’s ability to measure reliably the temperature on another planet.
But what if true? Does that scare anyone? Clearly, this would suggest that 1) warning is real, and 2) the scope of the issue goes far beyond CO2 in our atmosphere. So how should we respond if true?
(08-25-2019 10:23 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: [ -> ]I see from a post right now by Super Fly Cat in the Kyra Spin Room that says
"As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. (The Amazon spreads across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and parts of other countries.) Though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to estimates from the Global Fire Emissions Database, a research project that compiles and analyzes NASA data."
So while it's good I guess that the fire activity is average, this seems to conflict your belief that the fires are mostly in Mato Grosso. That link he puts in there does say the fire season in Brazil is now until November, so let's hope it stays average.
And I don't believe I've heard once that global warming is causing the fires. We pretty much all know that humans cause the fires, whether by accident or on purpose. Unless they're in the midst of a significant drought, you can safely assume the majority of fires are agriculturally related.
I did not state an affirmative belief that most of the fires were mostly in Mato Grosso, I simply eyeballed a photo and graphic.
The comment about global warming causing the fires was in response to Bill Maher's truly despicable comments about the death of David Koch, where he said something to the effect that we had ignored global warming until the Amazon is burning.
This is something that goes on every year. Overall, it's about average this year. Why has it not been an issue every year? Burning would actually be a pretty inefficient way to clear rainforest because after the fire you'd still have a bunch of residue to clean up. And the land that they clear is pretty poor farmland, with the highest cost of production in the world. They probably do some of that, simply because they are trying to do whatever they can to get food, clothing, and shelter.
And that brings me to the larger point which you continue to ignore. Environmentalism is a rich man's game. When you don't have food, or clothing, or shelter, what the temperature of the planet is going to be in 100 years is not a major concern. The problem is that our efforts to do anything about global warming are going to fail spectacularly if we can't get the developing world onboard. So how do we propose to do that?
And here is the photo I eyeballed, which has been confirmed as accurate by NASA, except the the red dots simply denote fires, and are not scaled to reflect size or intensity.
It does look to me like a sizable plurality, if not majority, of the dots are in Mato Grosso and surrounded by topography that looks more like fields than rain forest. There does not appear to be a lot of fire activity in Amazonas or Para or Rondonia. The darker area in Mato Grosso that is not having a lot of fires is, I believe, the Pantanal. That is such a unique geological and biological area that really needs to be preserved, and is currently threatened.
I am learning a lot about Brazil's geography I must admit. But in this photo (comparing it to the NASA link you provided), I'd say that Mato Grasso has much less fires than the areas to its north and west. Unless the Mato Grosso Plateau is different from Mato Grosso. Unless any of us are physically flying over the country, it's all speculation.
It's Hurricane Season so this is a good link to read. Axios is reporting Trump has suggested on several occasions that we should nuke hurricanes over the open Atlantic to make sure they don't hit the US.
ETA - to be fair, this has been suggested before. But it won't work according to most scientists. The National Geographic published an article about it 3 years ago stating why.
Okay, here's a map of the states of Brazil. What's described as the Mato Grosso Plateau on the map you linked is more like the states of Minas Gerais and Goias. With the states in their proper places, I will stand by my prior comments.
The state of Mato Grosso is the area to the north and west of the Mato Grosso plateau on the map you linked, where as you noted most of the fires appear to be. What does seem noteworthy is what appears to be the rather small number of fires in Amazonas and Para. I'm not certain about Rondonia, because it's not entirely clear on the fire diagram where Rondonia starts and Bolivia stops. There do appear to be quite a few fires in Bolivia.
![[Image: AmericasSouthPhysical-696x522.jpg]](http://www.alearningfamily.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/AmericasSouthPhysical-696x522.jpg)
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