I Wish to Raise Environmental Awareness

@questionWeaver a vast percentage of our population depends upon food acquired in and around our oceans, further, the rest depend upon crops and livestock raised for the purpose of providing food, all of these sensitive to the climate, thus, if the future of our food source is not the largest problem facing the world, then I don't know what is!

@samueltyler2 People have a lot different priorities ... getting their kids to soccer practice, upgrading their phones, shopping on Amazon, planning vacation ... the list has 100 things, before we will free up time to even mess with environment issues.

@questionWeaver I hope you are simply purposely being a devil's advocate. those may be some immediate priorities, but do you really rank getting a kid to soccer practice as a higher priority than dealing with our environment?

@samueltyler2

yes I do ... immediate priorities are real priorities ... things 200 years in the future ... are just talking points.

@questionWeaver i do wish that we had 200 years until the environment becomes a real problem. look around you, problems are real all ready. from the bleaching of the great barrier reef, to the wild swings in weather, we don't have eve 100 years to wait!

The world around me looks pretty darn healthy ... but, I will wait till California takes the environment seriously and restores logging so we can stop those fires and mudslides

@questionWeaver if they log then you lose trees which prevent mudslides. the fires stripped trees away, etc., and led to the mudslides, they were predictable. the fires were, at least partly, blamed on the excessive heat and changes in the microenvironment. The ball returns to you to protect us from our efforts to screw up our environment.

No ...it is the crazy environmental policies of California that is causing the problem ... loggers PLANT ... create fire buffers ... build detention and retention solutions ... grasses are planted ... habitats are encouraged to vigorously restore timber stands.

loggers build access roads for fire relief ... they alter the foliage, to be more fire resistant and easier to put out.

loggers use means to heal slopes quickly ... including water retention and diversion

they are like the best thing California could have to stop the fires.

it would take 40 years

but, nowhere else in the US, where healthy forresting is practiced ... is there wild fires and mudslides.

of note ... I have been awarded "best forest practice" by an environmental group.

I know what I talk about

If that was what loggers did then I would be in favor as well. I also am appalled that developers were given the ability to build homes without any regard to the forests, and the possibility of the undergrowth losses and gains under the trees. One thing about forest fires, if they can be survived, is that the underbrush gets cleared and new growth appears and the forest is recycled. That has been going on for millions of years. You are absolutely correct that our manipulation with roads, housing developments, commercial growth, have all produced disaster.

BTW, I sit on several national environmental study groups, appointed by both the administrations of presidents #44 and #45.

@samueltyler2

nice ... get the word to them!

During the winters, timber reserves suppress the invasives (thebrush you describe) ... there are ways to ddo it right and ways to do it wrong.

California does not permit reserves to do that. .... at all.

So California is proprogating shallow rooted invasives ... which drives the canopy producing trees away.

But, even if somebody corrected the condition ... they would not be permitted to harvest ... so, there is zero incentive to do anything.

I live on 200 acres of land harvested 18 times, going back into the 19th century ... It is prize-winning attractive .... it really is cool to harvest and replant ... it is like corn

@questionWeaver you have taught me a lot today, but I still believe that climate change is perhaps humanity's greatest current challenge.

Welcome ... take the California fires out of the puzzle ... and let coal plants run high-temperature... clean coal ... with stack scrubbers ... then, I might take the whole concept more seriously.

to make it favorable for fires and impossible to reduce particulant/CO-2 ... gives the wrong message

as far as coal, even if there is a need for coal to produce electricity, and there isn't, the technology to clean the various effluents is not really that good, and the damage to the land from the mining makes it a bad investment!

Please ... I am an engineer ... do not talk renewable fuels and solar ... that stuff is nonsense .... no good will come of it.

We could hit our carbon goals by doing one thing ... let people be good stewards ... stopping the fires and using clean coal techniques ... period

The plush to diesel years ago certainly backfired, why do you think we can make coal safe and clean?

@samueltyler2

The technology is 30 years old ... it reduces the amount of coal and natural gas consumed ... it substantially raises the recoverable BTU per lb of fuel ... it substantially reduces both particulant and Co2 ... then allows the use of scrubbers that can substantially further reduce the particulant.

My hunch is the CO2 could likely be further reduced, by trapping it and redirecting it to enhanced oil recovery .... with lower CO2 volumes it is theoretical that the CO2 could be economically recovered... it has been done.

It also creates more flexibility in power generation ... so they do not bleed off so much power.

We all know it works ... doubt there is a downside.

The upside, is it makes possible many other techniques to further clean the exhaust and reduce fuel consumption.

But, at the moment regulations do not permit it.