We use the fossil fuels for things. That is, in essence, saying that we should do fewer things or do the same things more efficiently. The economy won’t go for the former and the latter is a matter of technological innovation and the cost effectiveness of those technologies. Better battery technology is more vital (IMHO) to CO2 reduction than trying to convince coal companies to stop being coal companies, fire everyone, and pack up the operation.
You can legally mandate coal company closures. You can’t legally mandate technological innovation. You can only dump money into it and hope that a genius finds an answer (if there is one).
That leaves the reverse path of not just reducing output, but instead cleaning up the output after the fact.
Reducing CO2 through mandate: No-go
Reducing CO2 through technology: Risk that there is no such technology or that it won’t appear in time
Reducing CO2 through active measures to reduce CO2: Possible, but expensive.
(To be fair, I’m ignoring carbon capture at the source of production, in this discussion. But it’s worth noting that you really shouldn’t leave any options off the table and focus on just One True Solution.)
As far as coal goes, that’s actually one of the brighter spots in the climate change solution. Whenever a utility proposes building a new coal burning power plant, some lawyers from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal program show up at the PUC’s meeting about it and point out that state law requires utilities to use the cheapest power available and coal is not it. So that was a big success, at least in the US. But coal power is also being reduced in Europe, although more in western Europe than east.
So while we can’t directly close coal mining companies, a lot of them are on the verge of going bankrupt, if they haven’t already, as the coal business in general shrinks. It’s not perfect. Bankrupt coal companies usually abandon mines that need envirponmental remediation. And coal burning power plants leave a large quantity of coals ash around even after they shut down.
The Sierra Club has now moved beyond just opposing coal. They’ve renamed their program Beyond Carbon and are targetting natural gas plants as well.
Whenever I see scientists and others insisting that Climate change should be only countered by abstaining from Fossil fuel usage, it reminds me of the religious purists that insisted that Abstinence was the only way for birth control.
Sure cutting back fossil fuel usage is great; just like abstaining from rampant sex, but it is not going to be effective in itself for Climate change just like abstinence wasn’t.
Like birth control, we need climate control. The Climate purists may protest against it, but emerging technologies and research towards global dimming or climate engineering are progressing (albeit with a lot lesser research dollars than the purists are getting).
Cite for anybody making any such dogmatic pronouncements about how climate change “should” be countered? I have seen lots of statements by scientists and other explaining how reducing our greenhouse-gas output (which largely overlaps with reducing fossil-fuel use) is currently the only practical way that climate change can be countered on the required scale, but I’m not aware of anyone saying that we shouldn’t also employ other measures if they were practical.
The difference is that birth control is a fairly mature technology widely available at reasonable prices, and we have very detailed knowledge of its effectiveness at achieving its intended goal. “Climate control”, on the other hand, remains a very quixotic set of proposed extremely large-scale experiments whose effectiveness and side effects we understand very little about.
It’s not lack of research dollars nor “protest” by so-called “climate purists” that makes “global dimming” and “climate engineering” essentially vague and unproven pie-in-the-sky projects in the current state of our knowledge.
I’m all for doing more research on any approach that could help mitigate climate change, but it’s absurd to think that just throwing more money at a particular highly hypothetical approach (and being less honest about its doubtful prospects for fear of hurting the feelings of people who think that you’re “protesting against” it) will necessarily guarantee its success in solving the problem. See also, e.g., cancer and nuclear fusion reactors.
One of the main reasons that “climate control” is not the best solution is that we know for sure that it won’t fix all the problem. Yes, it may help keep the atmosphere from overheating, but it won’t do anything for ocean acidification.
Note that I said to start by reducing fossil fuel usage, not to end with that. I’ve said many times that there is no one single solution, and that we should be pursuing all of the partial solutions. And there are a lot of ways to improve efficiency that we already have the tech for, and which pay for themselves very quickly, but which people just don’t use because… actually, I’m not sure why they don’t.
As for climate engineering, sure, let’s do that. The easiest form of climate engineering, and the only one we know will actually work, is reducing the CO[sub]2[/sub] in the atmosphere.
According to one source I checked, it requires 20-30 inches of rain during the growing period, and supplemental irrigation during dry periods. It’s also apparently a heavy feeder.
"The Kentucky duo grew 200 acres of hemp for CBD in 2018, and typically apply 125 to 200 lb. nitrogen, spread prior to planting and through an over-the-top application in July. “We’ve seen hemp’s fertilizer needs parallel corn, but I have to emphasize three years of data is not solid,” Sisk says. “Murray State University and the University of Kentucky are both looking hot and heavy at fertilizer use. Who knows the right amount? Nobody, yet.”
Beyond this being a gross exaggeration, hemp is not magically immune from insect damage and disease, may require routine sprayings and “safe” levels of pesticide residue for hemp are not well-established.
I’m skeptical about hemp Saving The Planet or Saving Agriculture.
Well fine then, compare the needs of hemp for water, pest control, weed control and feeding against its close competitor, cotton. Which do you figure is better for the planet and for agriculture? Then add in the factor of hemp making very good livestock feed which cotton does not and cannot do. How’s it look then?
So you’ve gone from saying hemp “doesn’t require a lot of water or attention” to claiming it compares favorably to cotton (both for farmers’ economic bottom line and the environment). Do you have the evidence to back that up?
Use of hemp for animal feed is still in the early stages and there’s a lot we don’t know.
“The survey also asked if farmers and ranchers think it is ethical to feed cannabis products to animals if trace constituents, such as THC, can be found in the meat. Overwhelmingly, respondents said no.”
Comparatively speaking, it doesn’t require much care, attention nor water. It’s very hardy, quite pest resistant and grows wild in many parts of the US without anyone ever intentionally planting it, just reseeding year after year after year and resisting efforts to get rid of it. There are plenty of places in the US that naturally get 20-30 inches of rain per year and even if you do need to irrigate the stuff I respectfully submit that it’s less damaging to the planet to grow hemp rather than, say, growing watermelons in a desert like Hermiston OR.
And yes, hemp does compare well against cotton as cotton is notoriously needy and soil depleting, requiring a lot of resources to produce a fiber that’s weaker than hemp and that requires more processing to get to usable fiber. Hemp fiber is straight and very long and retting it is pretty simple compared to good old Eli Whitney’s cotton gin. Hemp seed isn’t embedded in the fiber the way cotton seed is, that alone makes it an easier fiber to harvest. There was a reason why growing hemp was required by law at various stages of America’s growth.
As for the animal feed issue, did you note the part where it asks “IF trace constituents, such as THC, can be found in the meat”? Hemp, by federal definition, cannot contain more than .3% THC per dry weight and therefore it’s not possible for animal feed to contain enough THC to appear in the meat. Doubly so because the animal food is made from the seed after the oil has been pressed and the seed has zero THC in it–as anyone who shops at a natural foods store can attest as it’s present in quite a number of human foods already. Hemp seed contains all amino acids humans need and aside from what I consider to be an indifferent flavor profile it’s quite capable of giving humans and other animals a very good source of food–better than corn definitely and we feed that stuff to all kinds of animals in spite of it being an incomplete protein with an unfortunately high carbohydrate content.
I have only mildly skimmed a few of your and Jackmannii’s posts and, I would say, whatever argument either of you is trying to make needs something in the way of solid cites.
Eh, it’s all out there and it’s Sunday and I’m disinclined to waste a lot of time tracking down cites before I have to buckle down to work but ask yourself why, before the reefer madness epidemic started and going back centuries, the hemp plant has been such a mainstay of European agriculture? Is it because it was a useless, delicate plant that didn’t give us much in the way of return? Why did England require its colonies grow the plant and expend so much effort and expense to ship it back to the motherland? The word “canvas” derives from “cannabis” and hemp cloth and rope have been the preferred materials used in sailing ships for centuries because hemp floats, dries quickly and is very mildew and mold resistant. Hemp oil is useful both for food and for industrial applications such as soap, varnishes and plastics. Hemp can be used to make fiberglass and hempcrete is strong and light and using hemp in building sequesters carbon for a good long time. It’s a useful, versatile plant that has been cultivated literally for millenia and for good reason. Just because America decided to go insane on the subject less than a hundred years ago does not suddenly wipe out the history of hemp nor does it change its utility.
Since you compared hemp favorably with cotton as an agricultural product, can you explain why cotton became such a huge crop in the U.S. for clothing manufacture compared to hemp? If it had such huge advantages, this is hard to understand.*
*I did once buy a nice hemp shirt for Mrs. J. It may well yet become a viable crop on a larger scale for clothing, but I don’t see it as more than a marginal player in the marketplace.
**interesting that to some, not only are cannabis/CBD oil miraculously effective for what ails you, hemp is a cure-all for farmers’ financial ills. :dubious:
Fashion. Cotton was seen as more desirable because only poor people wore hemp–and cotton is very soft right outta the chute whereas hemp fabric needs more washing and wearing to get to that point of perfect softness but on the other hand it wears like iron. Blending hemp and cotton makes for a really sturdy yet soft fabric that has the best of both worlds. Heck, I had some silk/hemp blend fabric and it was amazing. Silk without the floppiness, good stuff.
And no, to address your snark, hemp is not a cureall but it IS a very good and utililtarian all 'round crop that furnishes food, fiber, building material AND sequesters carbon briskly in an incredibly short time. As for financial ills, just Dr Bronner’s soap alone is trying like hell to stop buying Chinese hemp oil and bring their production in line with locally sustainably grown hemp oil but can’t because the US is so far behind in production so yes, it’s also profitable. Sheesh.
To get back to empress trees, it also sounds like a bad idea to depend on any monoculture crop for an important purpose. What happens if you plant many thousands or millions of acres of empress trees and a major pathogen develops or more likely gets accidentally imported from abroad? Better to encourage mixed tree plantings with a wide range of species, and not just fast-growing ones (which are more susceptible to storm damage).
I just spent an enjoyable time outdoors with my dog in the shade of a couple of trees I planted years ago, a tupelo and a Kentucky coffee tree. They may not save the Earth, but it’s nice to share their company.
Hemp is actually a royal bitch to harvest and can damage and jam harvesting equipment. There might be a tech solution but having a specialty equipment just for hemp isn’t gonna fly with most farmers. Hemp leaf harvest is still done by hand AFAIK. Hemp is also much more vulnerable to wind damage than cotton.
Hemp as a fabric is a bitch to work with. I’ve done it myself and it was prone to jamming machines. I’ve talked with people who sew thick leather for a living and they’d say they’d do anything to avoid working with Hemp. Hemp is also very prone to rot and the crop, once harvested, has to be stored with care.
Processing hemp fibers is a lot tougher than with cotton. There is no equivalent of a cotton gin for hemp.