Climate change: what are YOU doing to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand?

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1452 posts

Uber Geek

#1896630 7-Nov-2017 09:55

MikeAqua:

frankv:

MikeAqua:

From a deep environmental perspective, the earth will recover, when we have substantially wiped ourselves out.

"Recover" ??? That's a very anthropocentric way of looking at it.

The Earth will continue to exist, in some form or other, whether we're here or not. We're not substantially changing the Earth, except for the 10-mile thick skin that we need to exist.

What I was attempting to say (as simply as possible) is that the biosphere as a whole is dynamically stable. It reacts to perturbations via adaptation of organisms and ultimately recovers objective measures of innate ecosystem health like diversity, biomass, abundance and trophic flow. It settles on a new equilibrium that is functionally the same but at a species level may be different.

This is what the fossil record shows to have happened after previous mass extinctions. From time to time the planetary conditions regulate the biosphere (e.g. snowball earth). Most of the time the biosphere (including humans) regulates planetary conditions - e.g. climate change.

A planet-scale example of recovery is the carboniferous period (after the Late Devonian Extinction event). A micro-scale example is Chernobyl.

It would take a solar-system scale perturbation to stop the biosphere from recovering.

The words "ultimately recovers" are important here. Consider this assessment of how long CO2 lasts in the atmosphere:

The lifetime in the air of CO2, the most significant man-made greenhouse gas, is probably the most difficult to determine, because there are several processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. The rest is removed by slower processes that take up to several hundreds of thousands of years, including chemical weathering and rock formation. This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years.

So, although it's very important to strive to reduce CO2 emissions urgently, it may already be too late, bearing in mind that CO2 "can continue to affect climate for thousands of years".

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MikeAqua

7611 posts

Uber Geek

#1896695 7-Nov-2017 11:19

frednz:

MikeAqua:

frankv:

MikeAqua:

From a deep environmental perspective, the earth will recover, when we have substantially wiped ourselves out.

"Recover" ??? That's a very anthropocentric way of looking at it.

The Earth will continue to exist, in some form or other, whether we're here or not. We're not substantially changing the Earth, except for the 10-mile thick skin that we need to exist.

What I was attempting to say (as simply as possible) is that the biosphere as a whole is dynamically stable. It reacts to perturbations via adaptation of organisms and ultimately recovers objective measures of innate ecosystem health like diversity, biomass, abundance and trophic flow. It settles on a new equilibrium that is functionally the same but at a species level may be different.

This is what the fossil record shows to have happened after previous mass extinctions. From time to time the planetary conditions regulate the biosphere (e.g. snowball earth). Most of the time the biosphere (including humans) regulates planetary conditions - e.g. climate change.

A planet-scale example of recovery is the carboniferous period (after the Late Devonian Extinction event). A micro-scale example is Chernobyl.

It would take a solar-system scale perturbation to stop the biosphere from recovering.

The words "ultimately recovers" are important here. Consider this assessment of how long CO2 lasts in the atmosphere:

The lifetime in the air of CO2, the most significant man-made greenhouse gas, is probably the most difficult to determine, because there are several processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. The rest is removed by slower processes that take up to several hundreds of thousands of years, including chemical weathering and rock formation. This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years.

So, although it's very important to strive to reduce CO2 emissions urgently, it may already be too late, bearing in mind that CO2 "can continue to affect climate for thousands of years".

Again .... during the carboniferous period CO2 level was twice was it is now and life was abundant, diverse and very film worthy - all absent mammals. The biosphere will do just fine. The problem is the impact of climate change on people and property. It's a humanitarian and economic issue.

Mike

frednz

1452 posts

Uber Geek

#1896749 7-Nov-2017 12:52

MikeAqua:

frednz:

MikeAqua:

frankv:

MikeAqua:

From a deep environmental perspective, the earth will recover, when we have substantially wiped ourselves out.

"Recover" ??? That's a very anthropocentric way of looking at it.

The Earth will continue to exist, in some form or other, whether we're here or not. We're not substantially changing the Earth, except for the 10-mile thick skin that we need to exist.

What I was attempting to say (as simply as possible) is that the biosphere as a whole is dynamically stable. It reacts to perturbations via adaptation of organisms and ultimately recovers objective measures of innate ecosystem health like diversity, biomass, abundance and trophic flow. It settles on a new equilibrium that is functionally the same but at a species level may be different.

This is what the fossil record shows to have happened after previous mass extinctions. From time to time the planetary conditions regulate the biosphere (e.g. snowball earth). Most of the time the biosphere (including humans) regulates planetary conditions - e.g. climate change.

A planet-scale example of recovery is the carboniferous period (after the Late Devonian Extinction event). A micro-scale example is Chernobyl.

It would take a solar-system scale perturbation to stop the biosphere from recovering.

The words "ultimately recovers" are important here. Consider this assessment of how long CO2 lasts in the atmosphere:

The lifetime in the air of CO2, the most significant man-made greenhouse gas, is probably the most difficult to determine, because there are several processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. The rest is removed by slower processes that take up to several hundreds of thousands of years, including chemical weathering and rock formation. This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years.

So, although it's very important to strive to reduce CO2 emissions urgently, it may already be too late, bearing in mind that CO2 "can continue to affect climate for thousands of years".

Again .... during the carboniferous period CO2 level was twice was it is now and life was abundant, diverse and very film worthy - all absent mammals. The biosphere will do just fine. The problem is the impact of climate change on people and property. It's a humanitarian and economic issue.

OK fair enough, so I will reword my post to reflect what I had in mind:

So, although it's very important to strive to reduce CO2 emissions urgently, it may already be too late to preserve our human species, bearing in mind that CO2 "can continue to affect climate for thousands of years".

In other words, ignoring the fate of the planet itself, which we know has survived such events before, if we were able to significantly reduce our carbon emissions over the next 100 years, will this be enough to preserve human life on our planet? Or, are we already too late to achieve this?

This article suggests that the concentration of CO2 needs to increase 150-fold for the CO2 to become toxic...I hope this is right! The article also says that:

Bearing in mind that all those mathematicians and paleo-something scientists do not have a clue about the real capacity of the CO2 sinks, like the water and the biomass (more about it in the next report) I reckon that we are perfectly safe for a long, long time and should celebrate CO2 as a gas of life.

Rikkitic

Awrrr
17234 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1896951 7-Nov-2017 16:34

Maybe the dinosaurs will come back and get it right the second time around.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

frankv

5581 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1896952 7-Nov-2017 16:36

That article is a strawman... as the top reply to it (September 24, 2015) says "Absolutely no one, other than idiots like yourself, has ever suggested that the increases in CO2 concentrations could be toxic". Incidentally, this page (which seems more credible to me) suggests that 1% CO2 concentration would be unpleasant, and it sounds like 2% for a long time would be toxic.

The problem is NOT the CO2 itself, but its effect as a "hot-house gas" to increase the temperature of the atmosphere and the biosphere in general. I don't think there's really any danger of extinction of the human species; there will always be some micro-environment somewhere on Earth that is not only survivable, but probably pleasant. But the survivable areas will be smaller, and won't be where people live now. So there *is* a danger of death and suffering and starvation for a lot of people.

frednz

1452 posts

Uber Geek

#1897110 7-Nov-2017 19:38

frankv:

That article is a strawman... as the top reply to it (September 24, 2015) says "Absolutely no one, other than idiots like yourself, has ever suggested that the increases in CO2 concentrations could be toxic". Incidentally, this page (which seems more credible to me) suggests that 1% CO2 concentration would be unpleasant, and it sounds like 2% for a long time would be toxic.

The problem is NOT the CO2 itself, but its effect as a "hot-house gas" to increase the temperature of the atmosphere and the biosphere in general. I don't think there's really any danger of extinction of the human species; there will always be some micro-environment somewhere on Earth that is not only survivable, but probably pleasant. But the survivable areas will be smaller, and won't be where people live now. So there *is* a danger of death and suffering and starvation for a lot of people.

Thanks Frank, I agree that the article I referred to focuses too narrowly on the major climate change issues facing us as there is ample evidence now of the damaging effects of the increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

For example, it's good that TV One has a climate change page:

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/climate-change

There are a lot of good articles on the above page that indicate clearly several of the problems we face.

webwat

2036 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1897197 7-Nov-2017 21:45

frednz:

frankv:

That article is a strawman... as the top reply to it (September 24, 2015) says "Absolutely no one, other than idiots like yourself, has ever suggested that the increases in CO2 concentrations could be toxic". Incidentally, this page (which seems more credible to me) suggests that 1% CO2 concentration would be unpleasant, and it sounds like 2% for a long time would be toxic.

The problem is NOT the CO2 itself, but its effect as a "hot-house gas" to increase the temperature of the atmosphere and the biosphere in general. I don't think there's really any danger of extinction of the human species; there will always be some micro-environment somewhere on Earth that is not only survivable, but probably pleasant. But the survivable areas will be smaller, and won't be where people live now. So there *is* a danger of death and suffering and starvation for a lot of people.

Thanks Frank, I agree that the article I referred to focuses too narrowly on the major climate change issues facing us as there is ample evidence now of the damaging effects of the increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

For example, it's good that TV One has a climate change page:

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/climate-change

There are a lot of good articles on the above page that indicate clearly several of the problems we face.

I don't think anyone has proven that either CO2 are excessive or that any increase has been significantly affected by "emmissions". In fact CO2 is a life giving gas needed by carbon-based life as the source of carbon for plants and algae/phyto-plankton. We do know that the climate is always changing, with or without us, but expecting that we have some small chance to make some impact on the climate risks distracting society from the need to be prepared for change even though we might not want the change to happen. Its far more useful to focus efforts on measures that can mitigate storms and ocean levels than to be sidetracked trying to get developed countries managing carbon "emissions" while China goes ahead building more and more coal fired power generation.

Time to find a new industry!

TwoSeven

1512 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#1897523 8-Nov-2017 12:46

I don't think anyone has proven that either CO2 are excessive or that any increase has been significantly affected by "emmissions". In fact CO2 is a life giving gas needed by carbon-based life as the source of carbon for plants and algae/phyto-plankton.

I am not sure that is an effective argument. It seems to me to be ignoring the rather prominant fact that C02 is a greenhouse gas, regardless of what organisms require it.

Secondly, there are plenty of officially recognised sites and scientific studies that show the increase in emissions over the top of natural occurring C02 - if one chooses to search for them.

Software Engineer
(the practice of real science, engineering and management)

Ouranos

118 posts

Master Geek

#1897560 8-Nov-2017 14:00

webwat:

I don't think anyone has proven that either CO2 are excessive or that any increase has been significantly affected by "emmissions".

It is not clear what an "excessive" amount of CO2 would be. CO2 concentrations have varied greatly over the long term, and there isn't a right or wrong level.

However, we have a good understanding of how humans are increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. We emit 35 billion tonnes of CO2 per annum. That is equivalent to an atmospheric concentration of about 4.5 parts per million (ppm). The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is currently just over 400 ppm and increasing at a rate of about 2 ppm per annum. The atmospheric concentration is increasing more slowly than the amount of emissions because some CO2 is absorbed by the oceans, plant growth, etc. If we halved our emissions, then the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would stop growing (and would eventually fall somewhat as the natural process catch-up).

webwat:

In fact CO2 is a life giving gas needed by carbon-based life as the source of carbon for plants and algae/phyto-plankton.

True. But the issue is that we are pumping CO2 into the atmosphere faster than it is removed by natural processes. That is why the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is increasing.

webwat:

We do know that the climate is always changing, with or without us,

Also true. But the excess CO2 (and other gases, mainly methane) that we're emitting are adding to the natural processes. Our impact is quite small, but it is growing.

webwat:

but expecting that we have some small chance to make some impact on the climate risks distracting society from the need to be prepared for change even though we might not want the change to happen.

We are having an impact. There is no real doubt that, despite attempts by some people to sow seeds of doubt. However, exactly how much impact, and what the future path will be, are subject to substantial uncertainty. We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But, our understanding of the relationship between CO2 levels and subsequent impacts on climate is still very much evolving. We understand the general relationships, but there is a lot that we don't understand - especially about the complex feedback mechanisms. The notion that "the science is settled" is nonsense. Even so, the science certainly does point in particular directions.

I agree that climate change is somewhat of a distraction, but mainly from the many other major and more immediate issues that face humans.

webwat:

Its far more useful to focus efforts on measures that can mitigate storms and ocean levels than to be sidetracked trying to get developed countries managing carbon "emissions" while China goes ahead building more and more coal fired power generation.

Rich countries can (probably) afford to adapt to the changes. Poor countries cannot. Ironically, while China is radically reducing its reliance on coal-fired electricity generation at home, it is building lots of coal-fired capacity elsewhere.

The main problem is that we have substantial uncertainty about the impacts and timing of climate change. Given that uncertainty, it is prudent to reduce the potential impacts by cutting back on emissions. The hard part is balancing the immediate benefits that we get from things that cause emissions (electricity, transport, farming, building, etc) against the potential long term consequences.

J32

98 posts

Master Geek

#1903356 17-Nov-2017 17:05

In my household we

1: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, green waste and food waste is composted and then reused in the garden.

2: In winter we heat only the room we are in. During day time it is the living room. During night time it is the bedroom. All our heaters have a thermostat so they will turn on and off to keep the temperature steady without running around the clock.

3: All our light bulbs are either CFL or LED. When possible the lights are off. Like when we watch TV and light is not needed.

4: I work from home, so I don't use my car as often. When possible we walk to things that are near by.

5: When an appliance is not in use it is turned off at the plug or they are plugged out of the wall to conserve power. When we are not in the house, everything but the refrigerator is off, including our hot water tank.

6: Since we moved into our current house we have planted several trees and plants.

What I would like to see happening country wide is better recycling solutions. In Germany for example people pay a return fee for glass and plastic bottles. Once they return them to the store, where they place them into recycling machines they get the return fee refunded. I would also like to see that every council provides recycling bins and make recycling mandatory.

I would like to see supermarkets to encourage companies they sell products of to use recyclable packaging and mark it correctly. Like most of the in house brands like Countdowns "Value" or New Worlds "Home Brand" have no markings that indicate if the packaging is recyclable (the triangle with the numbers) and therefore no recycling centre will take them.

I would like to see whole lot being done about reforesting native trees all over the North and the South Island.

I would like to see that a whole lot is being done to make urban areas greener. More parks, more trees, discouraging the need for cars by offering more reliable and better public transport, bicycle lanes etc. and most importantly updating waste water facilities which don't pump waste water into rivers or the ocean.

I would like to see some type of subsidy to get New Zealand houses fully insulated (I am talking walls as well), double glazed and to get better heating solutions installed. To be honest right now everything about the cost for windows, insulation and heating is a rip off compared to overseas.

DarthKermit

5346 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1903409 17-Nov-2017 19:04

Try to use my bicycle as much as I can.
Recycle everything I can.
Try to minimise electricity and energy usage.
I don't have children.
I prefer to try to fix something rather than just throw it out.

Stan

929 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1919855 14-Dec-2017 20:35

To anyone who is interested in a good clear breakdown of how global warming works watch this, guy normally is a tech analyzer but really liked his video on this I got alot out of it.

https://youtu.be/9mxZoUdYOWA

wellygary

7378 posts

Uber Geek

#1920262 15-Dec-2017 15:41

J32: In my household we:

Ok don't take this the wrong was but to be brutally honest, other than getting an electric car, anything a household does is pretty much tinkering,

Its estimated that NZs per capita emissions are 17 tonne per head, BUT 48% is agricultural and 80% of that production is exported,

SO removing nz's export ag emission local emissions per head are around 8.8+1.6 =10.4 tonne, a car is about 2 tonne per year for 10,000km,

If you exclude vehicle emissions, say 3 tonne (15,000 km) you have 7 Tonne to play with,

If you cut your remaining emissions by 30% (a pretty big ask) you reduce things by 2 Tonne,

When the local dairy farmer's herd goes up by 1 that wipes out your 2 tonne reduction,

Basically electric Transport and Dairy are where big emissions changes could be made in NZ,

fiddling round with light bulbs and improving insulation are all well and good, but with an 85% renewable grid it doesn't have a very high $/Co2 reduction ratio...

MikeAqua

7611 posts

Uber Geek

#1921205 18-Dec-2017 11:56

wellygary:

Basically electric Transport and Dairy are where big emissions changes could be made in NZ,

fiddling round with light bulbs and improving insulation are all well and good, but with an 85% renewable grid it doesn't have a very high $/Co2 reduction ratio...

Agree ... but slash the dairy herd and what is the effect on the economy as a whole? How does that effect peoples' ability to to 'upgrade' to EV's?

Personally I would attribute those dairy carbon emissions to the end users.

I guess it depends how you want to calculate your emissions footprint...

Do you only count direct emissions (car) or do you include the carbon embedded in consumable items you buy?

The consumer is the demand and therefore I think is ultimately responsible.

Mike

Fred99

13684 posts

Uber Geek

#1925928 28-Dec-2017 08:43

Men Resist Green Behavior as Un-Manly

Plausible hypothesis based on observation.
Lucky image-conscious men aren't running the planet... (/s)

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