You should read them carefully too, not selectively picking what suits you.
FYI Ian Plimer and Bob Carter (mentioned there) are paid apologists for the fossil fuel industries.
As I said above I produce wine commercially so maybe I know a thing or two.
Well, I did read them carefully and I must respond by saying that it is you who is being selective!
You have picked out a single response from the total of 26!
That single response refers to the two gentlemen you have mentioned, but appears to me to stand alone in the context of the article and the other responses.
Obviously wine and beer making is a closed cycle. You are not releasing more carbon dioxide than the vines, hops and barley took out of the atmosphere in the preceding year.
However if that CO2 is easy to collect and can be safely disposed of then next year those plants will take other CO2 out of the atmosphere that was not part of that closed cycle.
Making beer is not part of the problem but it could be part of the solution.
However if that CO2 is easy to collect and can be safely disposed of then next year those plants will take other CO2 out of the atmosphere that was not part of that closed cycle.
Making beer is not part of the problem but it could be part of the solution.
I think the important point is that there is an opportunity to capture this C02. Yes without doing so it might be carbon neurtal, but if it IS captured then the whole process will be removing carbon from the atmosphere...
Another area that is often overlooked, the timber industry is actually very good for reducing carbon (I'm not talking about irresponsible pillaging of certain third world countries forests). Logging is often see as evil, however provided the timber logged is being used for building long term structures or furniture, that carbon is semi-permanently removed from the atmosphere, and the regrowth takes more carbon out. Sustainable forestry, and recycling of old timber are two ways we can reduce carbon. Using timber instead of steel for construction is a big help.
What this has to do with the bushfires though is tenuous at best. Yes increased temperatures and more extreme weather due to climate change will have an effect on the ferocity of bush fires, but extreme bushfires have been a part of Australia at least since colonization, and that will always be the case climate change or not. Probably the only thing that would stop them for any significant period of time, is if we were to enter another ice age (which is one of the possibilities if the artic ice shelf gets low enough).
Tony.
Another area that is often overlooked, the timber industry is actually very good for reducing carbon (I'm not talking about irresponsible pillaging of certain third world countries forests). Logging is often see as evil, however provided the timber logged is being used for building long term structures or furniture, that carbon is semi-permanently removed from the atmosphere, and the regrowth takes more carbon out. Sustainable forestry, and recycling of old timber are two ways we can reduce carbon. Using timber instead of steel for construction is a big help.
What this has to do with the bushfires though is tenuous at best. Yes increased temperatures and more extreme weather due to climate change will have an effect on the ferocity of bush fires, but extreme bushfires have been a part of Australia at least since colonization, and that will always be the case climate change or not. Probably the only thing that would stop them for any significant period of time, is if we were to enter another ice age (which is one of the possibilities if the artic ice shelf gets low enough).
Tony.
Stanislav, if you check my posts then you'll see that at no point did I take sides in the argument.
However, you accused me of being selective so, sorry, I was moved to respond.
I know nothing about about producing wine commercially. However I am happy to consume your product - not as much as I used to though - doctor's orders!
However, you accused me of being selective so, sorry, I was moved to respond.
I know nothing about about producing wine commercially. However I am happy to consume your product - not as much as I used to though - doctor's orders!
Also accurate. Simple is good if it's also accurate; it makes it easier for people to understand, and reduces exactly the kind of confusion you're experiencing from that wine-making article.
In fact, I've spent a lot of years of my life finding ways to make complex concepts simple so that other people can understand them more easily.
Fact: there is a huge and crucial difference between normal short-term carbon cycling in and out of the atmosphere (which has zero effect on global atmospheric CO2 concentration), and emitting vast amounts of fossil CO2 (which is destroying our livable climate.)
Recently, a lot of people who are (quite understandably) worried about climate change have completely lost sight of that difference, and are now panicking and telling us we should eat crickets and stop making beer to avoid the planet turning into a lifeless, burning-hot rock. I sympathize with their panic, but that doesn't make these claims correct; they are not. Climate change is real enough, but beer and wine are not the culprits.
(I am a teetotaler, by the way, so I have no personal stake in the fight. If the entire world stopped making beer, wine, whiskey, and all the other forms of recreational alcohol, it would make zero difference to me personally.)
You've misunderstood the facts - please read the first few comments under the article. There are several clear, well written comments that clarify things quite well.
The professor in question thinks that there is an opportunity to *reduce* the amount of carbon in the atmosphere - very slightly - by capturing the (very small) amount of CO2 emitted by wine-making.
I admire the professor's enthusiasm, but this is roughly the equivalent of finding out you're spending $5000 a month more than you earn, and trying to get out of the hole by saving the $2 per month you normally spend on breath-mints.
Anyone with a shred of common-sense would tell you that, in that situation, you have to start by reducing your biggest expenses first: maybe the $4000/month you're spending renting that mansion you live in?
It's the same with global CO2 emissions. To make any significant impact at all, we have to start with the biggest sources of fossil CO2 emissions - and that's burning petroleum.
Unfortunately, that is also the hardest thing to reduce, as almost everything we value in our modern civilization is heavily dependent on it. And so we've ignored the crucial warning messages from scientists, for many decades now.
Well, let's see. A resting human being breathes roughly 10000 - 15000 litres of air per day. There's roughly 5% CO2 in exhaled breath, so each of us breathes out roughly 700 litres of CO2 each day.
Unless you drink eleven litres of juice per day, then, your breath is a much bigger problem than your juice consumption...
Perhaps we should walk around with a large tank full of calcium hydroxide solution strapped to each of us, breathing out our CO2 through it? (The solution converts gaseous CO2 to calcium carbonate, a white solid which precipitates out of the solution. Easy carbon sequestration.)
Well, no. The good news is that your breath isn't a problem, and neither is the juice you drink (other than it's sugar content, which is very bad for you), because that's recent CO2 that's recently been removed, and then returned, to the atmosphere.
-Gnobuddy
Yes, a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny part of the solution. But IMHO you have accurately and clearly stated exactly what the professor's position was regarding the wine-making emissions, and I thank you for that.
-Gnobuddy
150 billion cubic meter of natural gas is flared around the world every year. About 400Mt CO2 per year.
GAS flaring in industry: An overview
Not sure this includes all flaring one can see at every oil refineries. I let you find figures about this.
GAS flaring in industry: An overview
Not sure this includes all flaring one can see at every oil refineries. I let you find figures about this.
You forget the bit where trees were cut down to make space to grow that barley.
400 million tons of CO2 is 0.8% of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions (50 billion tons a year).
The elephant in the room is house heating/power generation and the use of petroleum for transport.
If you wanted to turn this thing around, stop all house heating, wrap up and grin and bare it. Turn all air conditioners off and sweat it out. Only electric private transport.
Perhaps one way of bringing it home is to pass laws that only allow heating and cooling from renewable sources - wind, solar, nuclear.
Mother Nature will fix this by depopulation. If we carry on like this, I can see (and scientists have written about it) large swathes of the planet will be uninhabitable. Ergo, mass migration, war etc.
If you read James Lovelocks stuff, you see just how incredibly finely balanced Gaia is - we’ve shocked the system by pumping huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere in what is the blink of an eye in geological time scales and the system is now trying to find a new, higher average’ temperature set point. In that process, everything has to adapt - climate, life systems etc.
We’ve had the party over the last 150 years. I’m afraid Mother Nature is now presenting us with an ultimatum: cleanup or I’ll do it.
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At least in Europe those trees were cut down possibly centuries ago.
Certainly not recently.
We have had a few bush fires near Manchester, England.
Some natural and some started by crims.
Have you read this:
"The World Bank reports that between 150 to 170 billion m3 of gases are flared or vented annually, an amount value about $ 30.6 billion, equivalent to one-quarter of the United States' gas consumption or 30 % of the European Union's gas consumption annually."
From the document I pointed to ?
And, my post pointing to gas flaring was to answer about CO2 released by beer breweries and wine making.
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Where I live, farms are shrinking rather than growing. But trees are being cut down in huge numbers to build more, and more, and more, apartments.
-Gnobuddy
Ever hear of Centralia, a tiny city in Pennsylvania? It sits on an incredibly large deposit of anthracite (coal), an estimated 24 million tons of the stuff, which accidentally caught fire in 1962, and has been burning underground for fifty eight years now. There have been estimates that there is enough coal under there to continue burning at the present rate for another thousand years.
More at Wikipedia: Centralia, Pennsylvania - Wikipedia
But all these things are diversions from the elephant in the room, as Bonsai put it in his well written post #191.
My unhappy prediction: we are not going to get off petroleum, because we can't - we're too completely dependent on it, in too many ways, and voluntary global starvation and economic collapse is not an option any government will choose voluntarily. So we'll ride this out to the bitter end, until the forces of nature finally beat us at our own game, and mass starvation and economic collapse become inevitable, not optional.
Incidentally, atmospheric CO2 levels are not only still rising, they're actually rising faster than before (top right graph still concave upwards, rising a little more steeply every decade: ESRL Global Monitoring Division - Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network ). Incredibly, not only are we not braking, we're actually still accelerating towards the cliff.
-Gnobuddy
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