What Do We Think About Climate Change

Which words should I be sprinkling salt and pepper on, Hoyte?

Is the government going to start confiscating wooden boats?

Is Chavez going to invade Texas?

Or are the Iranians somehow going to fly a Russian surface-to-air anti-aircraft missile a thousand miles to Israel--carrying a warhead bigger than it is?

I cheerfully admit there are some in Iran who'd like to drop a bomb on Israel. But if they manage it, it won't be with one of the SAM's the Russians sold them. The Russians aren't stupid enough to sell them long-range missiles; they have their own Muslim problems at home already and don't need the Iranians joining the fun. And nothing the Iranians have in stock or under development right now would even make it halfway to Israel.

At the moment, the only three countries in the world with missiles that have that sort of range are the US, Russia and China.

 

No wood is worse. Wood is the most polluting fuel available, NOT coal. More CO2/Btu Hr or KwHr, or however you want to measure it. All the 'fossil' fuels are better than wood, which is what people burn when they can't afford fossil fuels. This does not take into consideration the actual felling of trees for the sole purpose of burning the wood for fuel, as this is obviously contributing to deforestation (and the resultant reduction of terrestrial carbon fluxing) which is another thing people do when they don't have access to fossil fuels.



Jimbo

 

wow
I had no idea propane was so high in co2

thing is carbon neutral is all based on the life span of co2 in the atmosphere and the growth time of the fuel in question

as we both know co2 has an atmospheric life span of about 150~200 years
so if whatever tree your burnings life span is less than that ( or at least you chopped it down within that time frame ) you are not burning sequestered co2 as all you would be doing is cycling the co2 in the system

in the end all other fuels on that list ( interesting list by the way ) are fossil fuels which of course are sequestered co2

my environmental endocrinologist friend though would be spouting off about all the other obnoxious gasses released by wood burning
apparently although I love the smell of a wood fire its not all that good for your lungs
kinda like smoking cigarettes but worse according to him at least
and I suppose he would know eh

 

Prove it. Post one measurement study (as opposed to a backfilled, circular reasoned computer simulation) which shows the residence time is long.

Yeah propane and natural gas are completely different animals. The energy density of natural gas is way higher also, like about half again more than propane. We are also sitting on enough reserves to last hundreds of years.

Another interesting thing about wood burning is the issue of charcoalification (is that a word? ) which is a very common practice in areas where wood is used for energy production. Users favor charcoal because it ignites easily, burns at a high temperature and cleanly. You make charcoal by partially burning wood in a oxygen deprived environment. In the process much of the total heat content of the wood is wasted to make the charcoal, making it far less efficient ITO Btu/CO2 than it was.. The low temperature burning also makes a lot of other nasty stuff like CO, soot and free fuel gases (wood gas) which are also potent greenhouse agents. A wood based energy economy would be probably an order of magnitude worse than fossil fuel on the whole greenhouse question, when all the factors are considered.

Jimbo

 

that's like asking for a measurement study of the power of a nuclear explosion

sorry but its a straw man argument
we both know there is no way to tag an atom and track its life cycle

best evidence suggests a life cycle of 150~200 years

hmmmmm
not sure about the wood based economy thing
I know wood pellets burn extremely clean but not unprocessed wood itself
specifically because of the high temperatures you can achieve in a pellet stove
I pretty much looked into it enough to know that wood pellets are carbon neutral and that they burn clean
other than that I have not really studied it

I do know that charcoal production is horible on the environment but then again Im not proposing that we go back to a charcoal based world. just that if I used steam I could burn pellets or wood and be carbon neutral

I'd consider using some form of Bio fuel but they are pathetically waist full to produce and I suspect have a relatively high embodied energy
certainly higher than wood pellets which are made out of saw dust
speaking of which I filled an entire dumpster with the stuff today
if I had the pellet mill I could have made several hundred lbs of pellet just today

 

Actually Jimbo, you have it completely backwards. Propane has more than twice as much energy as natural gas, cubic foot for cubic foot. That's why you have to change out the orifices, if you want to convert a natural gas stove or heater to propane--not simply because the propane is under more pressure, as many people believe.

Provided that 1 cubic foot of propane contains 2,516 BTU and 1 cubic foot of natural gas contains 1,030 BTU, it is accurate to say that propane contains over twice the usable energy content per cubic foot (2.44 times more). Applying these numbers to compare the energy values in real-world examples, we'll use a 100,000 BTU/hr furnace to demonstrate the comparison.

* 100,000 BTU/hr furnace will use about 97 cubic feet of natural gas (100,000 ÷ 1,030 = 97.1) in one hour
* 100,000 BTU/hr furnace will use about 40 cubic feet of propane (100,000 ÷ 2516 = 39.7) in one hour

http://www.propane101.com/propanevsnaturalgas.htm

I work at a natural gas compressor station, by the way--one that brings natural gas into California through Mexico and Arizona. As an operator, for 12 hours a day or night I'm the guy who keeps the station running. Among my other duties I start, stop and adjust compressor units, to keep the gas flowing according to the rates assigned me by our gas op's unit in Los Angeles. One of my duties is to keep track of the BTU's of the gas I'm pumping, because as a natural product it fluctuates. You wouldn't notice the difference while frying your eggs and sausage, but trust me: If the BTU's drop a fraction of a percentage, the folks running power plants want the rates they're paying adjusted on the fly, to reflect the fact that they're getting less energy per 10,000 cubic feet.

 

Uhuuu that's terrible!
Coal is such a malignant evil element! To think of all that carbon dioxide is just shocking! I choke at the thought.
To think that all that CO2 will increase the overall temperature by 0.04 degrees centigrade, makes my nights sleepless. I would donate my entire salary and go live in the forest eating roots just to reduce that shocking temperature increase by 0.01 degree. HONEST!

Of course if I go into the forest, I will no longer work so have little to donate plus I will take an axe with me and make smallwood of anything in my way to keep warm and eat the cows I take from the field to eat. They produce so much methane the ******* that they had it coming.

Ah the fallacy is so transparent that it makes you wonder about the sanity of those who blindly keep on banging on the same note.
By the way did you remember to renew your insurance against the millenium bug?

 

Troy

Jim meant for me to prove the life span of co2 in the atmosphere
Jim thinks its what the oil and gas industry spin says it is, about 5 years
Im going with the scientific evidence, about 150~200 years

he wants me to prove my numbers in the same way he cant prove his
its a classic straw man argument
he knows that physically tracking the life span of a gas in the atmosphere is impossible and he refused to accept deductive reasoning
he is also incorrectly applying the term proof to a derived number
lots of numbers in engineering are derived
if the process was unfounded in reality a lot of stuff would be falling down around our ears
the same kind of logic went into deducing the life span of co2
but Jim doesn't like that logic is what he is trying to say

cheers
B

 

You know, mocking people is fun; I do it myself on occasion. But when you're doing it and have no idea what you're talking about, it just makes you look like the south end of a northbound horse. I'll bet you spend a lot of time trying to shoo away the circle flies....

 

I wouldn't know about all that. But I do know he's talking through his hawse pipe, when he says natural gas has more energy than propane....

 

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21627

The New York Review of Books

Volume 55, Number 12 · July 17, 2008
The Brief Life of a Molecule
By D. A. Pratt, Reply by Freeman Dyson

In response to The Question of Global Warming (June 12, 2008)

To the Editors:

I very much appreciated Freeman Dyson's article entitled "The Question of Global Warming" [NYR, June 12]. However, I did not understand how he arrived at the comment that the average lifetime of a molecule of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about twelve years. Since I think this is an important point in the article, I would love to see an attempt at an additional explanation for those of us who did not "get it" the first time.

D.A. Pratt
Regina, Saskatchewan
Canada
Freeman Dyson replies:

You can get a rough estimate of the lifetime of a carbon dioxide molecule in the atmosphere by dividing the total mass of carbon in the atmosphere by the mass that is absorbed in photosynthesis by land vegetation each year. I do not know the exact numbers. Roughly, the total atmospheric carbon is eight hundred gigatons and photosynthesis absorbs seventy gigatons of carbon per year, giving a lifetime of about twelve years. This is the average time that a carbon dioxide molecule spends in the atmosphere before it is absorbed by a land plant. I used this lifetime to estimate how long it would take for a major change in the land vegetation to produce a major change in the atmosphere.

This calculation completely ignores the ocean. In reality the flow of carbon dioxide into the ocean is about twice as large as the flow into land vegetation. So the lifetime of a carbon dioxide molecule in the atmosphere is really only about five years. Between two jumps into the land vegetation, an average molecule jumps twice into and out of the ocean. I ignored the ocean in my estimate because I was considering only land management and not ocean management as a way of controlling carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is possible that ocean management may turn out to be technically more effective, but land management is politically easier because each country owns its own land.

 

No, the best evidence in the form of over 50 residence time studies say the residence time is short, about 5 years. You don't even have ANY evidence at all that it is long, since a computer modeled projection cannot constitute evidence of an observed reality better than a direct observation and measurement of that same reality. When a computer modeled parameter differs starkly with the observed reality, as is the case with the CO2 residence time, that does not constitute evidence of a new reality, but rather of a flawed computer model. You continue to skirt this issue simply because it is an absolute no-win for your side.

Oil and gas companies had NOTHING to do with the plethora of residence time studies that were done from the mid 1950's to the late 1990's. That's one more piece of pure fabricated ******** from a blatant bullshitter. Most of these residence time studies were done in conjunction with military nuclear tests. Another major group studied the change in the ratio of stable carbon isotopes. All the studies were in fairly close agreement that the residence time is short. As a side note, the stable isotope (Seuss Effect) studies have never found anywhere near the IPCC predicted fraction (21%) of fossil-sourced carbon in the atmosphere. So the IPCC's assertions about anthropogenic CO2 emissions being completely or mostly responsible for the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 is proven false TWICE by this particular group of studies.

WONDER B, Once again you've shown that You'll say ANYTHING to tar and feather anyone that disagrees with your religion as an oil company shill. This is no more than a transparent ploy to avoid answering the merit of their scientific assertions. About the only people that can't see through this is you and that Troy character who couldn't smell a rat if it took a **** on his upper lip.

Why not put some effort into trying to produce that residence time study I keep asking for, you know the one; the one that shows the residence time is long?

After 2 years of asking, I'm still waiting.......

Jimbo

 

I stand corrected, Propane has the higher energy density, mostly due to is much lower vapor pressure.

Jimbo

 

I actually had to do one of those 'change outs' a few years ago at a house I owned over in Orlando. Just forgot which way it went

Jimbo

 

No, propane has a higher energy density because it has a higher molecular weight and a similar molecular structure to methane (the principal component of natural gas.)

There are three atoms of carbon and eight atoms of hydrogen in a molecule of propane. There is one atom of carbon and four atoms of hydrogen in methane. Therefore, a molecule of propane has a higher fuel value than a molecule of methane.

According to the ideal gas law (which is approximately followed by gas-phase methane and propane, as long as the pressure is not too high and/or the temperature too low) any two gases at the same pressure have the same number of molecules per unit volume. However, because of the reasons discussed above, each molecule of propane has higher fuel value than methane. Therefore, if the two gases are at the same pressure, a cubic foot of propane has a higher fuel value than a cubic foot of methane.