February was Earth's hottest month on record ever. Yes, you should freak out

boing
64

Just pass a law. Boom! Abolished!

65

CHEMICALS, man!

66

Jesus Christ Australia!

This isn’t some sort of f-ing race to the bottom of the barrel (though it may seem like it).

'Murica has Florida and Texas, please let us handle the dumbassery. We kind of depend on everyone else for intelligent enlightenment


67

Executive summary:
It’s most difficult thing we as a species have ever had to give a damn about and fix. It’ll take a moonshot “Apollo 13” scenario on a global scale of countless dedicated people doing very hard things over a long period, transnationally, consistently, and we will need intergenerational and transgenerational training and follow-through to get this project done, if it still can be done. (I’m working the problem here in central Texas doing what I can with whatever resources I have on hand.)

From researchers of the Technische UniversitĂ€t MĂŒnchen (TUM) and the Helmholtz Zentrum MĂŒnchen:

Global carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise -- in 2012 alone, 35.7 billion tons of this greenhouse gas entered the atmosphere. Some of it is absorbed by the oceans, plants and soil. They provide a significant reservoir of carbon. Scientists have now discovered how organic carbon is stored in soil: The carbon only binds to certain soil structures.

source: Climate change: How does soil store carbon dioxide? | ScienceDaily

Citing multiple sources, this article from Yale:

"Supply-side approaches, centered on CO2 sources, amount to reshuffling the Titanic deck chairs if we overlook demand-side solutions: where that carbon can and should go," says Thomas J. Goreau, a biogeochemist and expert on carbon and nitrogen cycles who now serves as president of the Global Coral Reef Alliance. Goreau says we need to seek opportunities to increase soil carbon in all ecosystems — from tropical forests to pasture to wetlands — by replanting degraded areas, increased mulching of biomass instead of burning, large-scale use of biochar, improved pasture management, effective erosion control, and restoration of mangroves, salt marshes, and sea grasses.

“CO2 cannot be reduced to safe levels in time to avoid serious long-term impacts unless the other side of atmospheric CO2 balance is included,” Goreau says.

Scientists say that more carbon resides in soil than in the atmosphere and all plant life combined; there are 2,500 billion tons of carbon in soil, compared with 800 billion tons in the atmosphere and 560 billion tons in plant and animal life. And compared to many proposed geoengineering fixes, storing carbon in soil is simple: It’s a matter of returning carbon where it belongs.

source: Soil as Carbon Storehouse: New Weapon in Climate Fight? - Yale E360

I should probably bring up biochar, and Albert Bates makes a compelling pitch to use biochar for both locking up carbon in the soil as well as restoring fertility to same:

A solid, hard-nosed review of Bates’ book The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change which I agree with:

Albert Bates is driven by the specter of runaway climate change, of a world that may become uninhabitable. Though he's not a full-time climate physicist, it's hard to call him a layman either. He began writing on the subject 20 years ago. Climate in Crisis (1990) .... Why Albert Bates finds biochar hopeful lies in its potential, not just to sequester carbon for hundreds or thousands of years, but to improve soil fertility while doing so. Theoretically, we could grow lots of trees, make them into houses and furniture, and not burn down or demolish either for centuries, but practically, we don't have enough room....

source: http://www.permacultureactivist.net/PeterBane/BiocharReview.htm

Useful overview from Scientific American, talking to a man on the ground, as it were, citing multiple sources with additional links:

Increasingly more research shows that agricultural practices like cover cropping, no-till farming, composting or even the use of biochar can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, boosting the organic matter in the soil.

It is a “low-hanging fruit” in the fight against climate change, said Rattan Lal, the director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University. Farmers worldwide using a combination of conservation practices could sequester roughly 1 gigaton of organic carbon per year, he has estimated. That would be like taking nearly 800 million passenger cars off the roads.

source: Farms Harvest Cuts in Carbon Dioxide via Soil | Scientific American

Since you’ve gotten to this point reading this post, and if you’re not a climate denier, and if you haven’t completely fallen into a comatose-level of despair, please allow me to take a few more minutes of your time with my own pitch.

@doctorow has already mentioned David Graeber’s article on bOINGbOING here. I too reached my own limit of despair fatigue years ago. Inertia, couch potation and hopelessness were dull, even as I sought endless diversion and amusement. I remembered something my psychotherapist told me before she retired from practice. I offer it now here to y’all for absolutely free, though at the time I was paying $100+/hour (in 1990 US dollars):

It is very hard to remain depressed during the time one is physically active.

(reason 108 of a thousand reasons to love bicycles and the people who ride them)

So even if you don’t have kids, or see the effing point of trying to Save The Earth, or even if you’d rather spend your spare time at the All-You-Can-Get Hedonism CafĂ© (hey it sounds like a pleasurable pursuit to me), consider what your life might look like if you spent some of your physically active time in a/your/some garden, or a community-supported ag gig or working for a tree-planting charity in your area1. Take a permaculture design course and if you don’t have access to your own land, there’s rundown municipal land somewhere, a neglected brownfield, or a private landowner possessing a black thumb but plenty of dough and an urge to try summodat “self-reliance” stuff she/he read about in some dang blog.

Don’t label yourself. Other people can do that for you, and loudly. Plug your ears. Be a friend to yourself first, and don’t shoot yourself down for giving a damn and trying to do something constructive and positive, however small
 just start. @hello_friends has said it in other threads, I’ll say it here: don’t mourn, organize. Or at least find an organization that’s doing things the right way—farmers’ markets come to mind here—and support your local allies in the climate fight, environmental fight, justice fight
 really these are all tied together anyway.

If my pitch is all wrong, and you feel like you haven’t personally reversed global climate change before you die, chances are you may have a tasty homegrown tomato to eat 2, shade to rest in from a fruit or nut tree, flowers to look at. You’ll be in a better mood. You’ll have had some time to put your fingers in the dirt to ground yourself in some non-pixel, non-digital ephemeral blessings IRL. You’ll be surprised at nature’s regenerative capacities and take heart.

One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.
:thunder_cloud_rain: [— Edward Abbey](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey) :cactus:

  1. Caveat emptor: http://www.plantit2020.org/pdf/Scams_Short_Edited.pdf (if possible, keep the tree planting local enough to factcheck and monitor progress, e.g. http://www.treefolks.org/neighborwoods-free-trees-for-your-home/ and http://www.urbanreleaf.org/ ).

  2. This year I am excited to try something new because I’ll only have to water once a week: wicking barrels. I like that these are movable, unlike my wicking bed.

6 Likes
68

Touché.

When I read The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age a few years ago, it spoke to me. John Michael Greer tied a lot of loose ends together in a constructive, illuminating way. His is not a how-to book, though it does have some actionable information. A useful review of it:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2008-08-31/review-long-descent-john-michael-greer

69

I pressed the “like” button for this 52 times. Doesn’t seem right that the bbs software disallows more than one “like.” Is there scientific notation “like” add-on nowadays for those of us who really really like something?

Like x 1023!

ETA: nouns missing
 need to go make the coffee, drink the coffee


4 Likes
70

I do too.

I use Native Energy for my carbon offsets. Maybe you will find the following useful?
http://www.nativeenergy.com/wind-energy.html

NativeEnergy’s work with Native American tribes goes back to our company’s founding. As our first Help Buildℱ carbon project, we helped the Rosebud Sioux develop the first tribally owned large-scale wind turbine. We have also helped build several other tribally owned projects, including the Salish and Kootenai Hydro Project and the Alaska Village Kasigluk and Toksook Bay Native Wind Projects.

They are transparent. They get results. They’ve been around a while. They work in places that fit really well with some of my priorities. Bob Gough (my partner knows him) worked with them on a project on the Rosebud reservation.

If this info is not useful, please don’t give it another minute of thought. I am very impressed with your electric car project/headache/challenge in another thread and I learn a lot from you
 it’s like going to school [in a good way]. Thanks for what you bring to the party.

1 Like
71

I’d say biochar and mulching are a waste of good biomass. What about turning it into nondegradable polymers and using it for e.g. 3d-printing of houses? Concrete-like material with organic binder? Same sequestration, better usability.

2 Likes
72

3 Likes
73

Nah we still got 3 days for comments on this thread
 :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

2 Likes
74

Pasted image918×275 18 KB

6 Likes
75

7033778029_aa10a625fc_b.jpg1024×1024 305 KB

5 Likes
76

I can’t be sure, but I think Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (cmpbs.org and how rude! offline right now) is chewing on a related approach. I like your idea. I wonder whether the total energy footprint of a 3d-printed house as you describe it is carbon-negative, -neutral or -positive. Your proposal would be an ideal countermeasure for conventional cement manufacture process.

I have been sporadically following the progress of various “carbon-negative cement” pioneers and find such material(s) tantalizing if also promising:

On the biochar: my vegetable patch does seem to yield more using less water when I add it in, so for now, I’m keeping biochar in the mix. I’m hopelessly addicted to poblano, ancho and other chile peppers and grow my own
 and dang if those don’t like their biochar soil.

And mulch is one of the very few cheap and simple ways I can keep the soil alive out here during droughts and extreme heat. Solar radiation in all its wavelengthy forms just fries the living crap (literally) outta the soil in the summer. Once my soil foodweb crashes, it’s an ugly struggle to reconstruct it just so I can get any, let alone good-tasting, peaches and plums at harvest time.

1 Like
77
78

Ah ha ha ha! recursion! recursion!

Feeling a bit dizzy
 let me put down this Klein bottle of wine


Klein-Bottle.jpg600×830 64.5 KB

2 Likes
79

(out of ‘likes’)

Somehow, this is on topic. Really. It is.

2 Likes
80

Are you aware that the general attitude of the climate science community to climate engineering is, roughly speaking, “pray that we never have to try that, because it probably won’t work and has a high risk of creating additional catastrophes”?

2 Likes
81

Natural gas (AKA methane) is, at best, marginally less-bad than petroleum from a climate POV.

Fission, while fairly good (but not perfect; construction impacts are large) from a climate POV, has genuine problems related to nuclear weapon proliferation and operational safety. Yes, a modern reactor can be operated extremely safely if built and run by competent and responsible experts. But how many governments worldwide would you trust to place the management of their power infrastructure purely under the control of “competent and responsible experts”? Particularly if that infrastructure is to be created on an unprecedented scale and in an extreme hurry? Chernobyl didn’t happen because of fission, it happened because of Russian.

Hydro is largely already done; we’ve already dammed all of the easily-exploited rivers. Trashing the few remaining riverine ecosystems is not going to make a substantial contribution.

It has to be renewables; not one of them, but all of them. Geothermal, hydro, tidal, wind, solar; we need the lot. And we have to shut down the global carbon industry ASAP. In a sane world, coal burning would have stopped at least a decade ago.

1 Like
82

Aha! As per lolipop_jones’s post, caring about such things shows you have some agenda beyond climate change! Which I guess is supposed to be a bad thing, even though he immediately mocks activists who don’t care about anything beyond climate change. If that’s inconsistent, well, maybe that just means us alarmists get to be wrong twice.

I mean, it’s not like he hasn’t had this exact same point answered before, if it mattered to him.

4 Likes
83

I am trying to tell him that without being totally dismissive. Heck, we could be wrong. But really. Really.