Global Warning/Climate Change

[ken_sylvania]

Modern cars are not only vastly more efficient. They also last much longer.

Cars, yes. Appliances, and a lot of other things, not really.


AC Then and Now.png

Of course you shouldn't be putting a window unit AC in a modern house anyway. You should be putting in a heat pump which is much more efficient and will both heat and cool. They typically last several decades.

You also get what you pay for. I have an 18 year old furnace that could use replacement at some point with a more modern heat pump. There is a wide range in quality and price and you can get more expensive models with long warranties or cheaper models with shorter ones. A lot (most) new houses are built with cheaper "builder grade" models because the builders don't care and want more profit. But you don't have to put in cheap appliances. There are high quality products out there too.

Yes, and I suppose we should be putting in walk-in refrigerators and freezers as well...

[ohio jones]

Modern cars are not only vastly more efficient. They also last much longer.

Cars, yes. Appliances, and a lot of other things, not really.

AC Then and Now.png

Of course you shouldn't be putting a window unit AC in a modern house anyway. You should be putting in a heat pump which is much more efficient and will both heat and cool. They typically last several decades.

The unit on the right is the indoor part of a split system VRV heat pump. Latest tech and highest efficiency.

My house is not modern, but I have the most modern window "U"nits available. Just one step down from the VRVs in efficiency, but cooling only. I'll be thrilled if they last one decade.

Mom's refrigerator, on the other hand, lasted about 55 years until it gave out a few months ago. Yes, it used more electricity than the new one does, but over its life span the energy usage was probably less than the energy used to manufacture the replacement.

That gets magnified when looking at buildings. Proponents of adaptive reuse say that it can take up to 80 years for a new, energy-efficient building to overcome, through more efficient operations, the negative climate change impacts that were created during the construction process.

[Ken]

Cars, yes. Appliances, and a lot of other things, not really.

AC Then and Now.png

Of course you shouldn't be putting a window unit AC in a modern house anyway. You should be putting in a heat pump which is much more efficient and will both heat and cool. They typically last several decades.

The unit on the right is the indoor part of a split system VRV heat pump. Latest tech and highest efficiency.

My house is not modern, but I have the most modern window "U"nits available. Just one step down from the VRVs in efficiency, but cooling only. I'll be thrilled if they last one decade.

Mom's refrigerator, on the other hand, lasted about 55 years until it gave out a few months ago. Yes, it used more electricity than the new one does, but over its life span the energy usage was probably less than the energy used to manufacture the replacement.

That gets magnified when looking at buildings. Proponents of adaptive reuse say that it can take up to 80 years for a new, energy-efficient building to overcome, through more efficient operations, the negative climate change impacts that were created during the construction process.

Well of course. It rarely pays to tear something down and build new.

But if you are going to build new things then building them to be more efficient and use less resources is also better.

Your mom's old refrigerator probably also contained a lot more metal than a modern fridge of the same size. And also probably took a lot more energy to make than an equivalent fridge from today since modern factories and machines are also more efficient than they used to be. As are the transportation systems that transport them.

I'm not some starry-eyed futurist. But I think it is always better to improve on what we are doing, especially as the planet becomes more crowded and we can't afford to be as wasteful as we used to be.

Of course we can also be incredibly wasteful today. Some years ago I worked in a big office building in Washington DC. They kept the AC turned up so high even in the middle of August that the women were always freezing and some would actually keep stealth space heaters under their desks to keep warm. I guess the male bosses in their wool suits and ties liked things frigid even in mid-summer in sweltering DC. It was a 16 story building. I can't imagine how much electricity they wasted over the course of a year. Multiply that by the thousands of other office buildings in greater DC.

I also have a single co-worker who drives a monster GMC Sierra 2500 crew cab with a Duromax diesel engine on his suburban commute. It could probably pull an 80,000 lb. semi trailer at highway speeds. He says he bought it to tow his fishing boat. Which is actually an 18 ft Alumaweld with a Yamaha outboard that maybe weighs 1500 lbs. I expect my Prius could easily tow it and launch it. Of course he complains that it is impossible to park downtown. Well duh, it's not a car. It's a massively oversized truck. He also gets maybe 15 mpg and of course complains about the price of diesel. And no, he isn't some MAGA Republican, there is a faded Bernie Sanders sticker on the back next to his CWU sticker.

[Robert]

[quote=nett post_id=175070 time=1670880404 user_id=10401Ken, I think you've successfully shot yourself in the foot. Why do you liberals always focus on the trendy lunacy that is CO2 driven global warming, instead of focusing on things that are real, and that something can be done about?

I'm not sure what you are talking about with respect to the relationship between CO2 and temperature. We have ice core data tracking both that goes back 420,000 years. This is what they look like. What do you think? Is there a correlation or not? Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Vos ... _259791199



In fact, the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and climate is a completely uncontroversial and well documented scientific relationship that goes back to Svante Arrhenius who described the relationship in detail about 120 years ago.

I'm not sure what that link you provided is supposed to prove. It's mostly an unreadable bunch of gibberish.

When you overlay these charts and dial in, you will see that co2 LAGS warming temperatures.



It has only been the the past few million years that co2 and temperature even come close to correlating.

[nett]

One thing he doesn't actually talk about is efficiency. Appliances like refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines are 4-5 times more efficient than their counterparts from 40-50 years ago. New magnetic induction cooktops are far more efficient than old electric or gas ranges. Cars are also 4-5 times more efficient for a vehicle of comparable size and horsepower as one from the 1960s. Houses are also dramatically more efficient in many ways from insulation to heating. So we are making a lot of progress. So in that respect I'm actually pretty optimistic about human ingenuity and the future.

Tom addresses that exact point, and you're making a basic math error. There are not enough gains to be made in efficiency to have any noticeable difference. You've never lived through a declining energy economy. Your optimism if naive.

What point of his do you actually think relates to climate change?

The point he makes repeatedly is that agriculture is the most important place to look. It currently takes 10 cals of inputs (mostly petroleum) to make 1 cals of food. Renewables cannot make any meaningful impact on those numbers, mainly due to storage limitations. I've already covered how battery production is actually worse than petroleum, and they wear out, leaving more toxic waste.

There is no way out of this mess that does not involve completely reforming our agricultural practices to things that are not only sustainable, but restorative of the damage that industrialism has caused. The problem is that this cannot be done at scale, and it cannot be mechanized. it requires real, human labor combined with creativity.

The issue I have with man-made CO2 drive global warming is that it dominates every conversion, so that intelligent people (like yourself) spend all their time gasping about things that literally don't matter like increases in appliance efficiency, and don't actually work on the real problem.

Now, the real solutions do involve getting your hands dirty, and you might be fundamentally opposed to that, I don't really know.

[Ken]

One thing he doesn't actually talk about is efficiency. Appliances like refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines are 4-5 times more efficient than their counterparts from 40-50 years ago. New magnetic induction cooktops are far more efficient than old electric or gas ranges. Cars are also 4-5 times more efficient for a vehicle of comparable size and horsepower as one from the 1960s. Houses are also dramatically more efficient in many ways from insulation to heating. So we are making a lot of progress. So in that respect I'm actually pretty optimistic about human ingenuity and the future.

Tom addresses that exact point, and you're making a basic math error. There are not enough gains to be made in efficiency to have any noticeable difference. You've never lived through a declining energy economy. Your optimism if naive.

What point of his do you actually think relates to climate change?

The point he makes repeatedly is that agriculture is the most important place to look. It currently takes 10 cals of inputs (mostly petroleum) to make 1 cals of food. Renewables cannot make any meaningful impact on those numbers, mainly due to storage limitations. I've already covered how battery production is actually worse than petroleum, and they wear out, leaving more toxic waste.

There is no way out of this mess that does not involve completely reforming our agricultural practices to things that are not only sustainable, but restorative of the damage that industrialism has caused. The problem is that this cannot be done at scale, and it cannot be mechanized. it requires real, human labor combined with creativity.

The issue I have with man-made CO2 drive global warming is that it dominates every conversion, so that intelligent people (like yourself) spend all their time gasping about things that literally don't matter like increases in appliance efficiency, and don't actually work on the real problem.

Now, the real solutions do involve getting your hands dirty, and you might be fundamentally opposed to that, I don't really know.

I don't think there are any serious climate analysts who don't think we need to reform our system of corporate agriculture. Especially the utterly ridiculous process of massively subsidizing the ethanol industry in which we burn massive quantities of fossil fuels in order to raise corn to convert back into fossil fuels. People also say the same thing about beef and the meat industry which is the most wasteful component of American agriculture and advocate for a plant-based diet instead. That is nothing new.

I'm not sure why you think that is any refutation of basic climate science. Murphy isn't refuting any basic climate science. He is just saying that the transition to a renewable energy economy is going to be more difficult than advertised. Which is possible if we don't use nuclear. I'm actually a big proponent of nuclear which is something he doesn't seem to write about.

[nett]

People also say the same thing about beef and the meat industry which is the most wasteful component of American agriculture and advocate for a plant-based diet instead. That is nothing new.

I'm not sure if you're advocating for this or not, but plant based diets require far more industrial inputs than small scale meat farming.

I'm not sure why you think that is any refutation of basic climate science. Murphy isn't refuting any basic climate science. He is just saying that the transition to a renewable energy economy is going to be more difficult than advertised. Which is possible if we don't use nuclear. I'm actually a big proponent of nuclear which is something he doesn't seem to write about.

He writes about nuclear extensively actually. Are you sure you're actually reading his articles and not some imposter?

Murphy explains the thermodynamic problems with increasing energy use, and nuclear is no exception from that, in fact nuclear has even MORE heat waste problems.

Do you understand his thermodynamic limitation argument or not? If not, you should go read it. And you need to understand that industrial energy economies rely on increasing growth in energy consumption. It's not an insignificant side-effect. It's required to keep the whole machine moving. There are no examples anywhere in history of GDP increasing without an increase in non-renewal resource consumption.

There is no evidence that industrialism can survive without escalating energy use. I would posit that it cannot. It's not really a problem that we're going to have to deal with directly though, because the population is about to fall off a cliff. Microplastic pollution along with other endocrine disrupters is already having a disastrous effect on fertility worldwide, and it's only going to get worse.

The environmental problem I see coming is that there are not enough able bodied humans to do the hard work of fixing the damage from industrialism. Carrying capacity is already significantly reduced from what it was 200 years, and in some cases it will never recover without human intelligence applied to correct what we've done.

[Josh]

Do you think God is concerned about such trivia as what color we paint our cars, the size and shape of head coverings, and whether our churches have pulpits and stained glass. But he is not concerned with how we exploit and destroy his creation?

I am concerned with all of those things and am particularly keen to the latter two issues, which can be controversial in my own circles. I am a bit outspoken about my opposition to nuclear “power”, excessive pumping of non renewable aquifers, and acidification and salt buildup in farmland. These are areas I think many plain people have fallen short in yet there are also some visionaries (mostly Amish) speaking out in favour of renewable farming practices.

Actually I don't recall you ever sharing any actual scripture here. Just your own opinions and prejudices.

I don't practice sodomy and I teach my daughters not to. But I don't view it as any worse than dozens if not hundreds of other sins that the Bible also speaks against. in fact, probably less so since it generally doesn't hurt others unlike sins such as violence, neglect, theft, greed, lying, and mistreating others.

There are numerous references which are significant but I think these can be found with a simple Google search - or flipping to a topical section in any Bible. (The Ten Commandments are a good place to start, as are any of the Epistles.)

I agree that areas like pride and greed are important and indeed in my own fellowship this seem to result in as much church work and members on repentance as the more “carnal” sins do.

However, sins like pride often go hand in hand with sodomy. Both sins need attention as one is the ugly cousin of the other.

Sodomy does hurt others - we need only see the AIDS epidemic, STDs. and widespread prostitution to see the judgment against not just sinful spirits but the bodies afflicted by sinful behaviour.

Based on the amount of attention you give it here, one would think it is the only sin that you think matters.

I’ve given quite a bit of attention to wealth here, but few people on MN want to debate in favour of accumulation of wealth. (I believe we should have all things in common, which is not a view commonly held here, as a defence against the sins of wealth and the boastful pride of life.)

Of course we can also be incredibly wasteful today. Some years ago I worked in a big office building in Washington DC. They kept the AC turned up so high even in the middle of August that the women were always freezing and some would actually keep stealth space heaters under their desks to keep warm. I guess the male bosses in their wool suits and ties liked things frigid even in mid-summer in sweltering DC.

According to my parents, when women started wearing clothes inadequate to cover the body in the 1960s, office thermostats started going up. In the 1970s during the “energy crisis” there was pressure to turn the thermostat down, despite the prevailing fashion trends. Eventually women started wearing “slacks” as my mother calls them.

The expectation to have cold offices remained. This is the fruit of excessive central planning and trying to tell everyone what to do to “save energy”. We can also see that obvious sins like immodesty lead to harming God’s creation, by encouraging using too much energy. If it is cold, we should cover our bodies, as the Lord did when he sacrificed a lamb to make coats for Adam & Eve.

Of course you shouldn't be putting a window unit AC in a modern house anyway. You should be putting in a heat pump which is much more efficient and will both heat and cool. They typically last several decades.

Some of my window units are decades old, and still perform well. I got them for $40 or less at a yard sale - and one of them was free. Since they are older, they cool better and thus don’t have to be switched in as often.

You have no idea how long a modern heat pump will last. 30 years is very optimistic. RoHS circuit boards I would expect not to make it past 7, which are mandatory in all new consumer hvac equipment.

Of course, an even better lifestyle is to design homes not to need hvac year round and instead work in harmony with nature instead of against it. A wood stove can provide plenty of heat in winter time, and thoughtful placement of windows can allow cooling breezes in summer. But that wound require a rejection of mass society and the WEF’s agenda to force us all to live in apartment buildings.

Building high density tall buildings is a big part of what is destroying God’s earth.

[Josh]

I don't think there are any serious climate analysts who don't think we need to reform our system of corporate agriculture. Especially the utterly ridiculous process of massively subsidizing the ethanol industry in which we burn massive quantities of fossil fuels in order to raise corn to convert back into fossil fuels. People also say the same thing about beef and the meat industry which is the most wasteful component of American agriculture and advocate for a plant-based diet instead. That is nothing new.

I strongly disagree with this. Beef can graze on pasture that is not good for anything else and provide very healthy wholesome milk, cheese, yoghurt, and beef. The alternative is pointless large suburban yards that do nothing but grow grass that then has to be cut.

[Ken]

People also say the same thing about beef and the meat industry which is the most wasteful component of American agriculture and advocate for a plant-based diet instead. That is nothing new.

I'm not sure if you're advocating for this or not, but plant based diets require far more industrial inputs than small scale meat farming.

What kind of small scale meat farming are you talking about?

Any meat farming in which animals are fed commercially harvested grains (chicken, beef, pork) are going to be about 10x less efficient than just consuming the grains themselves. That is a simple reality of trophic pyramids.

If you are talking about things like grass-fed beef then that is an incredibly small niche. There isn't remotely enough grasslands in the US or anywhere else to support populations with natural grazing of livestock. I'm actually in favor of things like returning the northern great plains to bison grazing as it is a much superior meat to beef and bison are much better on the landscape than cattle. But that will always be a very niche solution. Americans are not going to convert to a bison diet. So it is more of an environmental solution than a food supply solution.

I don't necessarily disagree with Murphy that energy transitions are going to be difficult. And I don't actually think that GDP is the best measure of human progress. A lot of what GDP actually measures is consumeristic waste rather than progress. But nothing of the small amount that I have read of him suggests that he is refuting any climate science. He is just saying that the transition away from fossil fuels will be more difficult than many assume.