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Post by GroundSquirrel on Mar 8, 2020 22:17:53 GMT
Briefly wondered in the Corona virus topic about whether I should start a thread about this. This topic agitates me a lot and that's not because I think that the world's going to end in the next year or so, because of a so-called CO2 problem. Mind you, I'm not denying that the climate isn't changing. I just don't believe that we have any influence on it by achieving CO2 neutrality. Especially when, at least in my country, the powers that be have decided to take absurd measures which cost a fortune and will not reach the surreal goal of net zero CO2 emissions by 2050.
Some of the measures to be taken to achieve this in my country:- Banning the use of natural gas as a source for heating and cooking. Roughly 90% of the houses in the Netherlands have a gas-fired boiler for heating. Strange enough I read that in Germany people are actually getting subsididies to use gas to heat their homes??? O_o - With gas being banned people will have to use alternatives to heat their homes: an electric heat pump. For these to work properly a house needs proper isolation, which a lot of the older houses in this country lack. Also these heat pumps need electricity to function, so where is all this electricity coming from? Not to mention the electricity for all those electric cars?
- All coal-fired power stations will be closed here. There are 40 gas-fired power stations, but a lot of them are currently not in use (even though they have the capacity to produce about 50% of the current electricity demands and a gas-fired power station emits about 2.5 times less CO2 than a coal-fired power station... But many environmental organisations want all the gas-fired power stations to close as well, because natural gas is a fossile fuel and therefore evil. - They want us to rely more on solar energy and wind energy. Two energy sources that aren't always reliable. - As an alternative to coal- and gas-fired power plants they want to build more biomass power plants. There are plans to have 628 of them in total. These use wood pellets as an energy source and emit more CO2 than coal-fired and gas-fired power plants. I read that only 10% of those wood pellets come from the Netherlands. The rest has to be imported from mainly North America, but also from the Baltic States and even India. Let's just forget about the CO2 emissions caused by the production of those pellets and transporting them this way. We all had to be shocked about those fires in the Amazon rainforest, but never mind all those trees being cut down so we can burn them in our biomass plants and reach our climate goals O_o
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Post by ladyaly on Mar 9, 2020 11:12:22 GMT
Some things here are really different.
Here we have still a lot of Oil-heaters. Thats a real ugly CO2 producer and a waste of a natural ressource, too. So they have decided to give you some money back if you change the heaters to Bio-/Gas- or Heat-Pump. You get it back over the tax far as I know. For the renovation of a house with better isolation it gves also money back. Our house got a pellet heating installation 3 years ago, which is so much cheaper then the Night-time electric produced thing we had before. You must know the pellets are made from the waste of the wood industry - which is a very useful tool for Industry and Enviroment. Since we have here a lot of this Industry the Transport is short.
But you are absolutely right - it will not work in your country.
I also think we agree both that something must be done - and our politic is just as helpless as yours. The nuclear-phaseout costs us a fortune and they do not even know what to do with the waste and remains of it. But some are so old and really a high risk. It is as always when humans toy with stuff they do not control or understand right. You can rely that the whining speeches about will hold on for long years to come.
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Post by GroundSquirrel on Mar 9, 2020 18:32:50 GMT
On a small scale, by using the waste of the wood industry I have no problem with it. That's an efficient way of dealing with your resources.
Sadly when implemented on a far larger scale, waste from the wood industry alone isn't enough to keep all of those biomass power plants running and deforestation is becoming a serious issue. To justify all of this they tell us that for every tree that was taken down they'll be planting new ones.
Take Estonia: According to satellite data in the period of 2001-2015 they gained 90,000 hectares of tree cover, but lost 285,000. And this is just in Estonia.
Keep in mind that the trees that were cut down were taking up CO2 from the air to produce energy for all of their activities (in the form of carbohydrates), and released oxygen as a byproduct. It takes years for newly planted trees to be as efficient in this process as the trees that were cut down. Forests can also help bringing temperatures down in a local climate btw.
Then consider the goal the powers-that-be say they want to accomplish: less CO2 emissions to stop the planet from heating up. Personally I don't believe that CO2 is the cause for this, but even if you do it should make you wonder why they're so set on taking measures that only make matters worse?
In my opinion the only reliable "cleaner" energy sources are gas-fired power stations and, as scary as it may sound, nuclear power stations.
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Post by ladyaly on Mar 10, 2020 9:23:35 GMT
I think Pellet heaters are really rather small here - around 500K as far as I see.
Its frightening for me what happens to the woods on earth in general. Just look at the Canadians -beside South America they should have the most woods on earth- terrible. People still have the meaning profit over Nature is the way. But without nature there will be no future.
What really aggravate's me is the fact that on our Highways is no Tempolimit. Germany is the only state - beside Afghanistan- without a Tempolimit. Can you blieve it ? The automobile lobby is here so strong, they manage to block all prposals for a law away.
But do I need to drive my car with 200+kmh over the Highway ? Surely not. A lot of stdies showing that you aren't faster and also the stress level for yourself is so much higher. It would help so much to reduce it to 130 kmh in a lot of ways - including CO2 and the death toll with car accidents.
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Post by GroundSquirrel on Mar 10, 2020 15:11:41 GMT
One biomass power plant they're building burns 50 truckloads of wood pellets a day. Not only do these plants emit more CO2 they also emit things like particulate matter, dioxines, nitrogen compounds that make the air quality worse. Funny that you mention the speed limit issue. A couple of years ago they raised the speed limit on our highways from 120 km/h to 130 km/h, but since we now have a nitrogen crisis on top of the CO2 madness our goverment decided to lower the speed limit to 100 km/h O_o This will be implement next month.
Initially they said it would cost a mere €8.000.000 to replace 4000 road signs, which works out to €2000 per road sign O_o
About a week ago it was announced that it wasn't going to cost €8.000.000 but €19.000.000 Maybe this means less accidents, but then emergency services are also bound by speed limits, meaning it will take longer for them to reach their destination too.
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Post by ladyaly on Mar 10, 2020 16:15:18 GMT
Oh wow - thats a lot for the small Netherlands. Emergency services not bound here far as I know - so it wouldn't affect that.
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Post by GroundSquirrel on Mar 10, 2020 17:44:09 GMT
Yup, in case of an emergency, emergency services aren't allowed to drive more than 40 km/h faster than the speed limit here. So when every second counts and the ambulance arrives 2 or 3 minutes later this could very well have an impact on whether someone lives or dies. Btw I thought this was an interesting TEDx Talk from Michael Shellenberger who changed his mind about nuclear power:
He even mentions an accident where two maintenance workers died after a windturbine caught fire. That's actually about 20 km's from where I live.
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Post by ladyaly on Mar 11, 2020 10:18:35 GMT
Interesting Video - thx for sharing. I wish people would start to hold on a moment and think !
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Post by GroundSquirrel on Mar 11, 2020 15:59:38 GMT
It's not easy to form another opinion on something when you only see what main stream media is showing you and any different point of view is demonized.
Saw a rather long interview last year where some people were discussing how the whole CO2 madness isn't about saving the planet, but about saving the banks.
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Post by GroundSquirrel on May 1, 2020 19:56:14 GMT
Has anyone seen the latest documentary by Michael Moore, Planet of the Humans, yet? Apparently it shows how "renewable energy" serves the purpose of wealthy interests and corporate America. It has caused quite a bit of controversy amongst climate activists, because a number of them want the documentary banned from Youtube. I didn't see it myself yet, but I hope I'll be able to watch it this weekend, because it is available for free on Youtube for a limited time.
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Post by Tup on May 1, 2020 20:51:25 GMT
Has anyone seen the latest documentary by Michael Moore, Planet of the Humans, yet? Apparently it shows how "renewable energy" serves the purpose of wealthy interests and corporate America. It has caused quite a bit of controversy amongst climate activists, because a number of them want the documentary banned from Youtube. I didn't see it myself yet, but I hope I'll be able to watch it this weekend, because it is available for free on Youtube for a limited time.
There's no question that people and companies make lots of money because of global warming. Some have less that pure interest and they skew every to incite hysteria, because that benefits them.
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Post by GroundSquirrel on May 1, 2020 21:32:57 GMT
At this point it wouldn't surprise me that Covid-19 is the new climate change. Also funny: over here "green" political parties only want to support businesses that make their businesses "green". LOL
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Post by ladyaly on May 1, 2020 22:31:01 GMT
Its pretty sure that a lot of people making money with all of this - no matter how you label it.
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Post by GroundSquirrel on May 1, 2020 23:59:02 GMT
Mulder and Scully were right: "Trust no one."
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Post by Tup on May 17, 2020 18:42:34 GMT
Speaking of weather... I'm starting to have doubt about this winter summer. It's roughly 1,5 months until my sweet four week summer holiday start. Last Friday it looked like this when I woke up: In Lapland there are still areas where there's one meter of snow.
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