New eco-disaster

Oh, no!
What the hell are we gonna do now?
Think, people – THINK!!!

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/olympic-torch-is-light-but-not-low-carbon/story-e6frg6so-1226072602729

Olympic torch is light, but not low-carbon

From: The Times
June 10, 2011 12:00AM

The 2012 London Olympics organisers have unveiled the golden torch that will carry the Olympic flame.
BLIZZARDS, hailstorms and hurricanes: the 2012 Olympic torch has been designed to weather anything a typical British summer can throw at it. Yet despite the ambitions of designers and the event sponsors, EDF Energy, attempts to create the world's first low-carbon "green" Olympic flame have failed.
.........
However, the failure of designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby to produce a low-carbon torch was criticised. "We tried really hard to do that. We were very close, but we just ran out of time," Mr Barber said.
The Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 said that was a poor excuse. "The promise of a low-carbon torch was made in 2007 and so the excuse of 'we ran out of time' is not acceptable,"

Some people's lives are evidently so perfect, they find anything to worry about!

I think that this author has a wee bit too much time on his hands.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/opinion/30palmer.html?_r=4

Fire Up the Grill, Not the Atmosphere

By BRIAN PALMER
Published: June 29, 2011

FOOD is responsible for 10 to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. By many estimates, cooking represents more of a meal’s carbon footprint than transport. For certain vegetables, it accounts for more emissions than agriculture, transport and disposal combined.
Fourth of July, the national celebration of combustion, presents an opportunity for atonement.
I’m not advising you to forsake grilling this holiday and join the ranks of raw-foodists. Nor do I believe that we can reverse climate change by eating burgers rare instead of well done. But a little creative thinking can reduce this year’s Fourth of July carbon emissions without gustatory sacrifice. And maybe that awareness will carry into other days and other parts of our lives.
Consider potato salad: a pale mixture of boiled potatoes and mayonnaise that is sometimes appetizing but always wasteful. An overwhelming majority of the energy in boiling goes into heating the water rather than cooking the potatoes.
Direct-heat methods are more efficient and usually tastier. Cubed and pan-fried potatoes take just 10 minutes to cook and require less than one-third the energy of boiling. (According to my math, microwaving potatoes is about 40 percent more efficient than pan-frying them on an electric stove, but when I do it the potatoes come out rubbery, and that is too much sacrifice for a holiday.)
If you insist on boiling, lower the heat once bubbles appear. Keeping the burner on high only speeds evaporation; it doesn’t make the water any hotter or shorten cooking time. And cut the pieces small, because cooking time decreases as surface area increases.
Now for the burgers and dogs. First, a green disclaimer. Beef is an environmental disaster, no matter how you cook it. However, if you can’t resist grilled cow, your big decision is between charcoal and propane.
Charcoal is made of wood, so the carbon it releases upon combustion is approximately equal to the carbon the tree it came from once removed from the atmosphere. In theory, charcoal should be less damaging than propane, which releases carbon that has been sequestered harmlessly underground for hundreds of millions of years.
It’s far more complicated in practice, though. We get most lump charcoal from cutting down mesquite trees, and in addition to the deforestation effect, it takes more fuel to produce and transport charcoal than it does propane. As a result, according to a 2009 study in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review, propane is nearly three times as efficient as lump charcoal.
Charcoal briquettes, however, are a different story. The compressed round briquettes are made from scrap wood that would otherwise go to waste. The better manufacturers build their plants near construction centers and use recycled heat from those centers to power their briquette kilns. If you take that into account, charcoal briquettes are ahead of lump charcoal and propane as the best option in terms of climate change. (Any kind of charcoal, however, releases more particulate matter than propane, which makes charcoal a greater contributor to air pollution. There are few easy choices in environmental analysis.)
And finally we come to dessert. Skip the pie. Baking is so energy profligate that the government hasn’t yet figured out a way to reward any residential ovens with the Energy Star label.
Here’s where you can really make use of your briquettes. One problem with charcoal is that you can’t turn it off when the burgers are done. In most backyards that means lots of heat — and carbon dioxide — goes to waste. Not in your yard, though.
Use that leftover charcoal glow to grill up dessert. Apples, pears, peaches and nectarines grill beautifully, and are even better à la mode. Or you can prepare a cobbler in a foil pan and grill it on the dying coals. From an environmental perspective, that’s free energy.
Maybe an Independence Day meal of pan-fried potatoes and grilled peaches seems un-American. But the tradition of backyard grilling isn’t exactly Jeffersonian in pedigree. Independence Day feasts in the early 1800s featured such classic American fare as turtle soup. By midcentury, revelers were gathering en masse to buy parts of whole roast pigs from street vendors. (A British visitor pondered, “What association can there be between roast pig and independence?”) Backyard grilling didn’t become popular until the interwar period at the earliest, and accelerated with the baby boom and suburbanization that followed World War II.
In other words, there’s nothing so very sacred about the Fourth of July cookout. So this year, why not experiment?

happy jack wrote:

[b]I think that this author has a wee bit too much time on his hands.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/opinion/30palmer.html?_r=4

Fire Up the Grill, Not the Atmosphere

Can you dispute anything the author posted?

happy jack wrote:

Artie60438 wrote:

happy jack wrote:

I think that this author has a wee bit too much time on his hands.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/opinion/30palmer.html?_r=4

Fire Up the Grill, Not the Atmosphere

Can you dispute anything the author posted?

No.
I just tend to wonder exactly what kind of loser worries about shit like that.

People in the world that care about the environment are losers?

happy jack wrote:

I just tend to wonder exactly what kind of loser worries about shit like that.[/b]

Or people who worry about people who worry about that...

Heretic wrote:

happy jack wrote:

I just tend to wonder exactly what kind of loser worries about shit like that.[/b]

Or people who worry about people who worry about that...

Bigger losers?

happy jack wrote:

People who think that they are saving the world by using pan-fried rather than boiled potatoes?

That's what happens. Conservatives are blocking anything that even acknowledges the problem exists, let alone discussing solutions, so yeah... this is the sh*t your left with. Ineffective homegrown do-it-yourself hippie bullshit from individuals who recognize and understand the problem but have no avenue for significant change.

Heretic wrote:

happy jack wrote:

People who think that they are saving the world by using pan-fried rather than boiled potatoes?

That's what happens. Conservatives are blocking anything that even acknowledges the problem exists, let alone discussing solutions, so yeah... this is the sh*t your left with. Ineffective homegrown do-it-yourself hippie bullshit from individuals who recognize and understand the problem but have no avenue for significant change.

You're being a little hard on the hippies, aren't you? I realize that the whole potato solution sounds kind of silly, but there's no reason to think that the grilled peaches won't bring us to "... the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal ...".

happy jack wrote:

You're being a little hard on the hippies, aren't you?

No. I hate hippies. Few things can shut down a legitimate discussion of resource use and growth faster than the phrase "save the planet". Conservatives in particular see that, or similar such nonsense, and immediately shut down, regardless of the validity of the message. Which is, admittedly, usually nonsense. Too much of the environmentalism movement is based on ignorance and feel-good new age nonsense like that, epitomized in Penn & Teller's Bullshit episode. Rampant drum circles? Dihydrogen monoxide? Classic. I've worked really hard to distance myself from that, immersing myself rather in the scientific literature, ensuring my arguments are evidence-based and rational rather than citing such a ridiculous feel-good op ed like the one above.

Heretic wrote:

happy jack wrote:

You're being a little hard on the hippies, aren't you?

No. I hate hippies

Man, thanks for that link! The stuff about NPR is absolutely priceless.

Patton Oswalt. Always funny. I've used another classic line of his more than once - "Everytime you eat a steak, a hippie's hackey-sack rolls into the gutter."