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Climate Change

Climate Change
Earlier my wife switched us to a renewable electricity supplier available through PECO, our standard distributor.

Now she has also switched us to a natural gas supplier that captures fugitive emissions from landfills and waste processing plants. The distributor is the same, so all we have to do is pay the somewhat increased cost. That's well worth it to fight climate change, and lets us put off changing our gas appliances to electric until later. Changing our water heater, dryer, stove, furnace, and electrical system to run them all will be major expenses someday.

In the short run, all I have to do now is figure out how to buy a used electric car. So really, reducing our carbon footprint is progressing more easily than I thought it would. Good options are already available, at least in our area.
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Climate Change
(10-16-2019, 05:16 PM)Alan V Wrote: Earlier my wife switched us to a renewable electricity supplier available through PECO, our standard distributor.  

Now she has also switched us to a natural gas supplier that captures fugitive emissions from landfills and waste processing plants.  The distributor is the same, so all we have to do is pay the somewhat increased cost.  That's well worth it to fight climate change, and lets us put off changing our gas appliances to electric until later.  Changing our water heater, dryer, stove, furnace, and electrical system to run them all will be major expenses someday.

In the short run, all I have to do now is figure out how to buy a used electric car.  So really, reducing our carbon footprint is progressing more easily than I thought it would.  Good options are already available, at least in our area.

Used electric car?

Take care.

Do you know how much new batteries cost?  Here, for a Toyota Prius, it's $16,000. Perhaps check it out.
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Climate Change
(10-16-2019, 10:00 PM)grympy Wrote:
(10-16-2019, 05:16 PM)Alan V Wrote: Earlier my wife switched us to a renewable electricity supplier available through PECO, our standard distributor.  

Now she has also switched us to a natural gas supplier that captures fugitive emissions from landfills and waste processing plants.  The distributor is the same, so all we have to do is pay the somewhat increased cost.  That's well worth it to fight climate change, and lets us put off changing our gas appliances to electric until later.  Changing our water heater, dryer, stove, furnace, and electrical system to run them all will be major expenses someday.

In the short run, all I have to do now is figure out how to buy a used electric car.  So really, reducing our carbon footprint is progressing more easily than I thought it would.  Good options are already available, at least in our area.

Used electric car?

Take care.

Do you know how much new batteries cost?  Here, for a Toyota Prius, it's $16,000. Perhaps check it out.

Yes, I know that new electric cars are still very expensive, but they lose their value very quickly compared with other cars (at least so far).  Thus "used."

I doubt my wife will let me do even that until my Prius C Hybrid is worn out.  She manages our money, and is much more careful how she spends it than I am.
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Climate Change
(10-16-2019, 10:00 PM)grympy Wrote:
(10-16-2019, 05:16 PM)Alan V Wrote: Earlier my wife switched us to a renewable electricity supplier available through PECO, our standard distributor.  

Now she has also switched us to a natural gas supplier that captures fugitive emissions from landfills and waste processing plants.  The distributor is the same, so all we have to do is pay the somewhat increased cost.  That's well worth it to fight climate change, and lets us put off changing our gas appliances to electric until later.  Changing our water heater, dryer, stove, furnace, and electrical system to run them all will be major expenses someday.

In the short run, all I have to do now is figure out how to buy a used electric car.  So really, reducing our carbon footprint is progressing more easily than I thought it would.  Good options are already available, at least in our area.

Used electric car?

Take care.

Do you know how much new batteries cost?  Here, for a Toyota Prius, it's $16,000. Perhaps check it out.

A friend had a new battery put in his Prius for $1600 US. Maybe you're talking about the plug-in version? But even that seems high. A Tesla 3 battery replacement, according to Musk anyway, is $5000 to $7000.
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Climate Change
(10-16-2019, 10:05 PM)Alan V Wrote: Yes, I know that new electric cars are still very expensive, but they lose their value very quickly compared with other cars (at least so far).  Thus "used."

I doubt my wife will let me do even that until my Prius C Hybrid is worn out.  She manages our money, and is much more careful how she spends it than I am.

My wife doesn't feel comfortable with an all-electric yet, so we compromised on the Subaru CrossTrek plug-in hybrid -- only has a 17 mile EV range but that's fine for the use case of getting around our small city to run errands, yet there's no range anxiety for the occasional road trip. I haven't put gas in it since we took a road trip in early September. In fact I never filled it back up when we got back. According to the phone app that works with the car, our effective MPG is at 102, life-to-date, and we've only got 1000 miles on it and about 400 of those required gasoline. Our typical use case though is just driving around town 5 miles or less per day. I expect the effective MPG to be MUCH higher than 102 after six months.

Now when my stepson eventually inherits our backup car (an '07 Volvo V50) she's willing to let me get an all-electric to replace that. But as much as I'd enjoy it, I won't, because we just don't put enough miles on a 2nd car to matter -- maybe like 2,000 per year. The really responsible thing to do would be to be a one car couple at that point, and use the local by the hour car rentals (they're all Priuses anyway) or rent an e-bike when I occasionally need it. Or just walk. But she doesn't want to be "stranded" with those options if I take the car out, so ... the logical thing is any old used car that's reliable. If it's an internal combustion engine, so be it. It's still a negligible carbon footprint in practice.
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Climate Change
Here in Victoria,  households could soon be separating rubbish into six or more
bins—instead of the usual two or three—to help solve the state's recycling crisis.

[Image: 11618266-3x2-700x467.jpg]

Is this proposal putting too much onus on the householder, rather than the source,
the manufacturer or the retailer?  When I was a kid, everything was sold in paper
or tin or recyclable glass.  We bought eggs and biscuits in paper bags, soups and
jams in tins, beer and milk in glass bottles, bread and meat in paper wrapping etc.

We bought peanut butter, honey, cornflakes, dried fruits, rolled oats etc in our own
reused glass bottle, and our takeaway Chinese in our own saucepans.  We took
string bags to the supermarket where there wasn't a single plastic bag in sight and
all the fruit and veggies were sold loose.

And we used to buy our soda in exchangeable syphons like this...

[Image: 1345889_140514231339_026.JPG]

Fuck me, I must be gettin' old LOL.

           Big Grin
I'm a creationist;   I believe that man created God.
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Climate Change
(10-20-2019, 05:02 PM)SYZ Wrote: Here in Victoria,  households could soon be separating rubbish into six or more
bins—instead of the usual two or three—to help solve the state's recycling crisis.

[Image: 11618266-3x2-700x467.jpg]

Is this proposal putting too much onus on the householder, rather than the source,
the manufacturer or the retailer?  When I was a kid, everything was sold in paper
or tin or recyclable glass.  We bought eggs and biscuits in paper bags, soups and
jams in tins, beer and milk in glass bottles, bread and meat in paper wrapping etc.

We bought peanut butter, honey, cornflakes, dried fruits, rolled oats etc in our own
reused glass bottle, and our takeaway Chinese in our own saucepans.  We took
string bags to the supermarket where there wasn't a single plastic bag in sight and
all the fruit and veggies were sold loose.

And we used to buy our soda in exchangeable syphons like this...

[Image: 1345889_140514231339_026.JPG]

Fuck me, I must be gettin' old LOL.

           Big Grin

 Dad used those syphons for his nightly brandy lime and lemon.  They had a 5 shilling deposit. We bought dad one of the early soda steam machines, so he could make his own soda water. Fucking hopeless. 


Ok, so I'm a cynic ; the notion  of school children sorting recyclables at this point puts me in mind of the 'duck 'n' cover'  drills for a nuclear attack.--
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Climate Change
My recycle wheelie bin lid.

[Image: qgjRmul.jpg]
[Image: M-Spr20-Weapons-FEATURED-1-1200x350-c-default.jpg]
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Climate Change
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/...ar-AAIZGf0

Sir David Attenborough: Humans have made a ‘tragic, desperate mess’ of the planet

Quote:Sir David Attenborough spoke of the “tragic, desperate mess” humans have made of the earth ahead of the launch of his new natural history series.


Seven Worlds, One Planet has been four years in the making and places a conservation message “at the heart” of every episode rather than at the end, breaking with the tradition of past BBC Studios Natural History Unit shows.

The seven-part series will spotlight new species and behaviours and is the result of 92 film shoots in over 40 countries.

Speaking at the launch of the programme, Sir David said: “We are now universal, our influence is everywhere. We have it in our hands, and we made a tragic, desperate mess of it so far.
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan.
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Climate Change
[Image: 40b675bb-8f89-4ff3-905b-5b61f9c19213.jpg]
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Climate Change
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/...ket-newtab

Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air-condition the outdoors

Quote:“Qatar is one of the fastest warming areas of the world, at least outside of the Arctic,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate data scientist at Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit temperature analysis group. “Changes there can help give us a sense of what the rest of the world can expect if we do not take action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.”


While climate change inflicts suffering in the world’s poorest places from Somalia to Syria, from Guatemala to Bangladesh, in rich places such as the United States, Europe and Qatar global warming poses an engineering problem, not an existential one. And it can be addressed, at least temporarily, with gobs of money and a little technology.

To survive the summer heat, Qatar not only air-conditions its soccer stadiums, but also the outdoors — in markets, along sidewalks, even at outdoor malls so people can window shop with a cool breeze. “If you turn off air conditioners, it will be unbearable. You cannot function effectively,” says Yousef al-Horr, founder of the Gulf Organization for Research and Development.

Was wondering when this was going to start to happen.
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan.
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Climate Change
(10-21-2019, 05:29 AM)no one Wrote: [Image: 40b675bb-8f89-4ff3-905b-5b61f9c19213.jpg]

Snarky, Level 10.
[Image: M-Spr20-Weapons-FEATURED-1-1200x350-c-default.jpg]
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Climate Change
Arctic Methane Measurements over Eastern Siberian Shelf Are Now the Highest Ever Measured: 1 of 2

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan.
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Climate Change
https://techxplore.com/news/2019-10-carb...e-air.html

Engineers develop a new way to remove carbon dioxide from air

Quote: 
A new way of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of air could provide a significant tool in the battle against climate change. The new system can work on the gas at virtually any concentration level, even down to the roughly 400 parts per million currently found in the atmosphere.

Most methods of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of gas require higher concentrations, such as those found in the flue emissions from fossil fuel-based power plants. A few variations have been developed that can work with the low concentrations found in air, but the new method is significantly less energy-intensive and expensive, the researchers say.

 
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan.
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Climate Change
Quote:https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...iWRSMUiPug

The Paris Agreement took effect in the United States and 89 other countries Nov. 4, 2016, after satisfying a requirement that at least 55 countries responsible for at least 55% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions formally join. That threshold was reached just 10 months after global leaders accepted the pact in Paris. It now has 187 members, including North Korea, Syria and Russia. The United States is set to become the only member of the United Nations that shuns the deal.

The earliest the United States could leave the deal is Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the presidential election. That's contingent on the United Nations' receiving formal notice of withdrawal 365 days earlier. Every day that the United States delays giving that notice is one day longer that the Trump administration will remain in the climate pact.
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Climate Change
(10-20-2019, 02:06 AM)mordant Wrote:
(10-16-2019, 10:00 PM)grympy Wrote:
(10-16-2019, 05:16 PM)Alan V Wrote: Earlier my wife switched us to a renewable electricity supplier available through PECO, our standard distributor.  

Now she has also switched us to a natural gas supplier that captures fugitive emissions from landfills and waste processing plants.  The distributor is the same, so all we have to do is pay the somewhat increased cost.  That's well worth it to fight climate change, and lets us put off changing our gas appliances to electric until later.  Changing our water heater, dryer, stove, furnace, and electrical system to run them all will be major expenses someday.

In the short run, all I have to do now is figure out how to buy a used electric car.  So really, reducing our carbon footprint is progressing more easily than I thought it would.  Good options are already available, at least in our area.

Used electric car?

Take care.

Do you know how much new batteries cost?  Here, for a Toyota Prius, it's $16,000. Perhaps check it out.

A friend had a new battery put in his Prius for $1600 US. Maybe you're talking about the plug-in version? But even that seems high. A Tesla 3 battery replacement, according to Musk anyway, is $5000 to $7000.

 How interesting. The figure of $16000 was given to me by a Prius owner, wanting to buy a new car.  Don't doubt he was mistaken, a brilliant man, but a complete technophobe.
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Climate Change
(10-16-2019, 10:00 PM)grympy Wrote: ...Do you know how much new batteries cost?  Here, for a Toyota Prius, it's $16,000. Perhaps check it out.

That sounds unrealistically high.  At any rate, Toyota claims that its engineers consider the NiMH batteries in
the Prius and other Toyota hybrids to be a life-of-the-car component. (Although they would, wouldn't they LOL.)

One Aussie report said [Dec 2017] that a new battery from Toyota cost $2430 AUD (about $1663 USD) with
the total price at $2890 AUD —including its $460 AUD installation cost.
I'm a creationist;   I believe that man created God.
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Climate Change
(10-29-2019, 11:23 AM)SYZ Wrote:
(10-16-2019, 10:00 PM)grympy Wrote: ...Do you know how much new batteries cost?  Here, for a Toyota Prius, it's $16,000. Perhaps check it out.

That sounds unrealistically high.  At any rate, Toyota claims that its engineers consider the NiMH batteries in
the Prius and other Toyota hybrids to be a life-of-the-car component. (Although they would, wouldn't they LOL.)

One Aussie report said [Dec 2017] that a new battery from Toyota cost $2430 AUD (about $1663 USD) with
the total price at $2890 AUD —including its $460 AUD installation cost.

According to Google: "Toyota hybrid battery replacement costs will vary between dealerships, but, in general, a new Toyota hybrid battery for the Prius costs about $2,200 – $2,600 without labor depending on your model year. (Aug 28, 2018)"

However, a hybrid battery is not the same thing as an EV battery.
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Climate Change
(10-28-2019, 09:13 PM)grympy Wrote:
(10-20-2019, 02:06 AM)mordant Wrote:
(10-16-2019, 10:00 PM)grympy Wrote: Used electric car?

Take care.

Do you know how much new batteries cost?  Here, for a Toyota Prius, it's $16,000. Perhaps check it out.

A friend had a new battery put in his Prius for $1600 US. Maybe you're talking about the plug-in version? But even that seems high. A Tesla 3 battery replacement, according to Musk anyway, is $5000 to $7000.

 How interesting. The figure of $16000 was given to me by a Prius owner, wanting to buy a new car.  Don't doubt he was mistaken, a brilliant man, but a complete technophobe.

Technophobes tend to regurgitate things they hear from other people without any research, that sounds like confirmation bias to me.
I've not heard of any of the batteries costing that much.

Even if it were 5k-7k, if you travel a LOT, let's say you put 10k miles on a car in a year or more, let's say a battery lasts 5 years.  If you're averaging 25mpg, at $4/gallon (let's just say on average), that's $1600 a year, or $8000 in fuel over 5 years.  If a battery needs to be replaced every 5 years, you're still ahead by $3,000.

Many car manufacturers are even guaranteeing their batteries up to 100k miles now, or 8-10 years.  Mind you, that's just the manufacturer's guarantee, some will last certainly longer.  So if you do the math, that's an insane savings on fuel over that mileage.  I'm a car guy, and I love my sports cars, but I cannot discount or ignore that the efficiency and cost savings has come a LONG way for electric cars.
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Climate Change
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-scientists...eddon.html

Scientists find no evidence for 'insect Armageddon' but there's still cause for concern

Quote:  Researchers who set out to test the widespread theory that the UK is experiencing an alarming plunge in insect numbers have found no evidence For "insect Armageddon."



Instead, the researchers from the University of York found peaks and troughs in moth populations over a period of 50 years. They suggest changing weather patterns and climate change could be an explanation.
The study tracked the amount of moths—which the researchers measured by estimating the combined weight, or "biomass" of all moths in a given area—between 1967 and 2017. The findings reveal there is around twice the combined weight of moths in the present day compared with the 1960s.
 
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan.
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Climate Change
Quote:https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/19/business/...index.html

A secretive startup backed by Bill Gates has achieved a solar breakthrough aimed at saving the planet.

Heliogen, a clean energy company that emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, said it has discovered a way to use artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Essentially, Heliogen created a solar oven — one capable of reaching temperatures that are roughly a quarter of what you'd find on the surface of the sun.

The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated solar energy can be used to create the extreme heat required to make cement, steel, glass and other industrial processes. In other words, carbon-free sunlight can replace fossil fuels in a heavy carbon-emitting corner of the economy that has been untouched by the clean energy revolution.
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Climate Change
A shopping centre in Townsville (north-eastern coast of Queensland, Australia) is building
undercover parking structures for its patrons by using solar panels, similar to giant carports.

[Image: 0pzxu9k74c041.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&a...a188d83ab9]

As a side note, Townsville was bombed three times by the Japanese during WW2.
I'm a creationist;   I believe that man created God.
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Climate Change
I'm holding onto my Toyota Highlander for now. Its a 2005 but I only have 29,000 miles on it, so it's not a big carbon footprint. I fact, I drive it so seldom I have to keep it on a drip charger. I haul stuff in a trailer to the recycle center and take back mulch in return to feed my trees, so an all EV is iffy. But I see a year coming soon where I can do that with an EV. Just not this year.
Never try to catch a dropped kitchen knife!
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Climate Change
We need to look out for the climate
as everyday temperature is going hotter day by day
need to plants so our generations live in peace
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Climate Change
(11-29-2019, 05:56 PM)kevdec Wrote: We need to look out for the climate
as everyday temperature is going hotter day by day
need to plants so our generations live in peace

Hello kevdec, what's your native language?
[Image: color%5D%5Bcolor=#333333%5D%5Bsize=small%5D%5Bfont=T...ans-Serif%5D]
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