White House Will Regulate Cow Flatulence

Damn dude, they totally forgot to do any decadal trend analysis. You should totally contact the NOAA or IPCC about that gnarly idea. Maybe we can finally get to the bottom of this thing.

If you're going to argue against liberals on climate change, you have to use the right approach. Saying it doesn't exist puts you on very weak ground. The trends are there, and the correlation with human-introduced pollution (and I suppose cow farts as well) is pretty consistent. Skewed analysis on the behalf of scientists who stand to get more funding by lying could be a thing, but it requires a lot of work to prove. Saying that correlation doesn't prove causation is fine, but it's also hard to prove that humans aren't the cause. You're better off attacking the stupid, ill-advised policies that the left keeps throwing out and the inherent corruption that results from government-funded environmental projects that go nowhere.

Yes! I mean... HEY! -wags finger-

You're bad at mathing? really?

Using the buzzword "liberal" aside, rather decent post that I believe we can agree with.

We're in agreement that some of the policies (including cap and trade) are rather stupid, and I'm never going to say we should stop using oil/oilbyproducts right now, just saying we need to wean ourselves off it.

I'm big pro-nuclear, so not many can say I'm much of a tree-hugger.

On another note: why aren't they after landfills and their methane production?

Why isn't the US trying to reduce their landfills rather than shipping waste to other countries or researching better ways to decompose the waste?

DK started in the 80's, iirc, an inceneration program for waste. Now 20% of heat in DK is generated from garbage and 5%~ of electricity used in DK. While the amount of garbage sent to landfills has drastically reduced.
http://www.renosam.dk/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=fd6d1b7e-d091-417f-9322-ba157b0125c9&groupId=19854

Germany has been investing heavily in multi-facistated power production plants (a combo of wind, solar, etc) in order to maximize land use and the energy potential from one plant.

China is also heavily investing in other energy producing concepts. Same in Japan, India and many, many others.

The US is not going to be the market leader in sustainable energy production unless people get off their denial high horse and start innovating and investing. For all the so-called fisical conservatives on this site that means higher energy costs for businesses and individuals in the future. Even if you think global warming/climate change is BS there is money to be made in selling more energy efficient products, developing sustainable energy methods/products, and decreasing the US's reliance on imported oil without depleting the US's finite reserves.

Edit: to be clear, this is profitable for private businesses not scientists.

Kara I will be driving past hundreds of wind turbines today. In WA where we get almost all our power from hydroelectricity.

We are investing in renewable energy.

It is a pity that the turbines are made in China though.

We tried that here... but idiots kept throwing explosives away (mostly compressed gas cylinders like liquid propane and aerosols like paint) that kept exploding inside the incinerator and killing people.

once the fire in one of those things goes out of control it's hell getting it contained.

Because we had a dream! A dream to create a floating continent! We succeded... sadly it is not habitable... we overlooked that small fact...

I do not propose to be an expert on this, but we do use landfills as sources of energy (something I've mentioned half a dozen times in this thread, actually). There shouldn't be a landfill left in the US that isn't self-sustaining in terms of electricity needs and most are able to sell back to the local energy grid as further income. I've not worked in an incinerator (but I have worked on a landfill, if wondering), so I'm unsure, but I think it would be absurd if we don't use them to produce further electricity.

Moreover, although it isn't exactly popular to say, we are in no danger of running out of places to correctly bury trash here in the US and the act of producing landfills has resulted in several completely safe and pristine hills and rises. The way a landfill is constructed makes environmental contamination virtually impossible, even when illegal items are dumped, and monitoring is strict to catch any possible failure.

So, basically, I'm not sure that your suggestions haven't been in place for a couple decades now. The lie told in the late '80s that the US was running out of landfill space did quite a lot to further make them efficient and environmentally sound. Sad that it also launched the recycling movement into overdrive. Excluding metal recycling, virtually all recycling causes more pollution and wastes more energy than it allegedly saves.

Unfortunately there are. There is a large landfill between Seattle and Tacoma WA that still flares off methane. We are mostly hydropower here and they would never amortize the generation gear.

So do I but economic reality prevails.

Almost every one is called Mt.Trashmore....

But in the Northeast it costs SO much to haul stuff to a landfill. Diesel fuel and distance....

And recycling.... I used to work in recycling. Its so easy to set up a recycling program anywhere that the prices of recycling feedstock crashed and burned back in the early '90s.

Glass in the worst. When I worked in recycling there was a green glass problem. The USA imported so much green glass, mostly wrapped around beer and wine, that every glass making plant had a mountain of green glass next to it. And they can only run the furnaces at 97% recycled feedstock. But we import clear, brown, and blue glass too. So today its a glass problem. Glass doesn't burn in incinerators.

I would have thought glass would be one of the other materials we could readily recycle? It's an amorphous glass (pardon the redundancy but that's the word) of silicon molecules containing occasional coloring agents. Can we not melt it down?

Barring that, there's a recently-famous beach in California. For several decades, glass was chucked into the local ocean and spent several years getting rough-tumbled before winding up on the beach. Owing to the tumbling effect of riding the tides, it made for a very colorful and relatively safe beach, albeit not exactly comfortable because it was effectively covered in small "rocks." Since becoming well-known, however, the height of this glass beach has dropped precipitously as tourists have made off with the multi-colored glass pieces.

So, provided it won't meaningfully affect the ecosystem (I can't see how it would?), let's find a few places that can support the action and chuck a few tons of colored glass into the ocean.

Regarding the cost of hauling garbage around, is that not merely bald reality? Even if I had the space and inclination to compost, most of my personal waste is non-compostable. Paper is worthless to recycle but at least it can be burnt, but it would be stupid for me to burn it since it burns too hot to provide any practical benefit for me (i.e., to heat my home). Aluminum and most other metals I can haul down to a local scrapper to get some cash, so it behooves me to chuck it in the garbage. All that really leaves is plastic which I emphatically can do nothing with, so getting rid of it is the only option.

Economically, is most glass even worth recycling? My knowledge is limited, but it seems as though it might cost more to recycle than to just produce the stuff from scratch. That seems to be the case with some other materials where the ecological benefit doesn't outweigh the economic cost.

Need a space elevator and then just rocket the garbage to the sun and call it a day.

Considering it is made from one of the most abundant substances on the planet, I'd wager easy money that glass is among the majority of materials not economically worth recycling. But nor are paper and plastic (actually, recycling either causes more net pollution than burning or burying the things).

There are landfills that do this but this is voluntary.
http://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-info/

Incineration used to be more common but that has changed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration#Incineration_in_North_America

You focused solely on landfills in my post. Roughly a quarter of the landfills in the US have some sort of energy recovery program.

Bolded: Recycling methods and techniques have greatly improved in efficiency since the 80's and are still improving. As energy prices increase recycling becomes even more economically viable (creating something new tends to be very energy intnsive versus re-using/recycling something else).

The entire point of my post was that the US has stopped (or drastically decreased) R&D into sustainable technologies whereas other countries have ramped up their funding and made great strides in efficiency. The US will become a market follower which is inherantly more expensive in the long run. Not only will the US lose out on potential revenue they will have to buy/rent this technology later or expend lots of money to play "catch up".

Washington is a pretty cool state but it is not the norm in the US.


Bolded is part of my point. The US is buying the technology available not investing in R&D (investing heavily compared to other countries or providing tax breaks/subsidies equilivant to what oil companies received when first getting started).

It is also odd that they are buying Chinese windmills. Longterm productivity is not as good for them as they tend to break more often than Siemens or Vestas. Cheaper initial price but longterm more financial upkeep needed.

Edited ~

that 8% of total mark saddens me

Oh FFS, who claims this?


As a farmer, I would think preventing crap from getting into places would be one of the things you would be interested in. Propagating this COSTS YOU MONEY. LOTS OF MONEY. STOP.

Alti, the bolded part of that is DEAD wrong. Among climate scientists almost all agree we are on a warming cycle and that the warming will bring more extreme weather. the only real argument is just how much of it is anthropogenic. The vast majority say most.

I read an article in Scientific American in 2011? 12? where some dude traced back anthropogenic global warming to 10,000 BC. Slash and burn agriculture, cattle and pig farming back then.

I read within the last month or two that the denial scientists have never been published in a peer reviewed journal. Not a one, not ever.

I will search for them tomorrow, but I think the latter is from slate, a known liberal source.

And you just could be right about the if not for global warming we would be in an ice age. But then you would have to admit to the warming phase part.

The earth has warming/cooling periods, so that's not really an argument, the only argument is whether humanity is affecting it, if so how, and what will that mean, etc, etc.

Yet big oil wants to keep raking in profits so they make up this *** to try to descredit scientists, it's sad.

environmental concerns shouldn't be a partisan issue.

Found the Scientific American article:

How Did Humans First Alter Global Climate?


Haven't found a way to search Slate yet....

Kangaroos to the rescue!

Kangaroo gut microbes make eco-friendly farts - Science News and yes, that's their headline.

Out-freaking-standing. While the rest of the world is in a rut, we're focused on farting.

We're classy like that.

The focus is climate change, which this is a part of despite the silliness of debating cow farts. It is also possible for multiple issues to be addressed at one time. What is this conversation detracting from exactly?

So I can't read further without a subscription and *** that noise. Question on my mind: what do they expel if not methane? Let's not forget that methane is far from the only "greenhouse gas" out there, even if it does happen to be both efficient and persistent.

Nothing, because when you can't actually make an argument against something, naturally the next step is to try to ridicule it.

Wanted: Federal Marshals to enforce the limited flatulence of cows law.