The Last Post Game!!!!

[Griffin]

Last _{Are the wild fires anywhere near you Aggie?} Post

[Swatopluk]

Increased forest fire warning around here too but we lack the sheer mass to create anything close to what happens in the US or Autralia.

Last _{living next to a park. But did not have fires of any note for several deacdes} Post

[Aggie]

Edit: living in a big city harvesting herbs is a bit of a problem. Not for lack of them, mind you. But I assume that they are full of toxic pollutants (PAH, heavy metals etc.)

I had foraging spots in downtown Calgary when I lived there... asparagus and mushrooms, fruit and berries, a few other things. I recall picking shaggy manes off the IBM office lawn in my dress shoes after work. Whether you consider Cowtown a big city is another story; moose and bears occasionally wandered into downtown. It's a fairly young and clean city for corporate types who plot the pollution of the rest of the world (it's the oil & gas hub).  I don't like to harvest near busy roads or old industrial sites, although my need to feed will occasionally override that for small quantities of treat foods like asparagus.

Are the wild fires anywhere near you Aggie?

The major British Columbia fire would be several countries away by European standards, and most of the extreme and unusual fire action is back east, half a continent away.  That's for the moment; I live in the forest so it's a constant worry. It was a dry fall, a winter with a low snowpack, and there was not nearly enough rain this spring, so it only takes one lightning strike to be in the thick of it.

Two summers ago, I went camping with friends but got ran out when a storm sparked a new fire right over the ridge from us. We were at the side of a lake and kept an eye on the smoke plume, as the wind was away from us. When the wind switched and smoke started pouring down the valley towards us, we decided to bail out. The wind was raging and I was as worried about getting hit by a tree on the ~50 km drive out of the woods as I was about the fire.  As I was approaching home, I saw more orange glow and flames...  the mountain about 3 km down the road from my house was on fire. Luckily, that burn did not spread and we had a hard rain that night to help extinguish it (maybe with help from helicopter water drops), but it was a tense night.

My parents and sister's family live in ponderosa pine lands; it's a fire ecology zone that naturally burns the grassland and small trees every 10 - 30 years to clear out space for the larger trees (which have thick bark and can withstand smaller fires). Every summer is a potential firestorm, although there has been more management of fallen debris over the last few years. The real danger has been from over-suppression of fires leading to excessive fuel buildup.


Last _{my other worry is the lack of water in the well this year; typically it flow over the top for about two or three months in spring/summer, but has not crested the top this year.} Post

[Swatopluk]

One danger of forest fires around here (i.e. in Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin) is that they often hit former military training grounds (of the Soviet forces stationed in the fomer GDR). The Russians did not take much care cleaning up those sites, so there is still lots of ammo, duds and toxic waste in the ground. And some of those training grounds were already in use more than a century ago when the idea of an environmental cleanup did not occur to anyone who had something to say.

Last _{I guess firefighters would prefer not to get into Danger UXB situations} Post

Edit: in the morning news there was a note that fires broke out on two of these former training grounds, that explosions occurred, a nearby village got evacuated and that 300 firefighters are on the job of getting the fire under control. But that's local not national news, so no comparision to what we can see in the US and elsewhere.

[Aphos]

I am fortunately far south of the Canadian border and have not experienced the awful smoke clouds coming down from Canadian wildfires.  I do have several friends living farther north that have had to put up with them.

Last _{smoking is bad for you} Post

[Swatopluk]

Would it be better if it was smoke from eucalyptus or tobacco* and marihuana* trees?

Last _{Would anyone breathing the latter be legally liable for consuming controlled substances?} Post


*yes, I am aware that those are not actual trees

[Griffin]

I worry about my son in Australia as the fires last year came right up to the edge of Sydney, although I don't know how close that was to his house.

The UK is in a terminal mess. It seems all our politicians tell lies, commit fraud, commit sexual assaults and pass punitive laws. MPs keep resigning. A Labour government with Starmer would not be much different. It seems we are doomed to this for years to come. We need a revolution. Of course, now we are not allowed to protest perhaps I should not be writing that.

Last _{Anyone know the answer to https://www.solvussolutions.co.uk/toadfishmonastery/index.php?topic=3956.new#new} Post

[Swatopluk]

Don't ask or take my advice on anything electric!
--
A clockwise or anticlockwise revolution?

Last _{And around what axis? You British were against the axis once.} Post

[Griffin]

Don't ask or take my advice on anything electric!

I no longer have the electric conundrum. I did not have to move equipment across the room.

It is shocking to see riots in France and know we couldn't have such protests here (when I believe that is what is needed) as they would need prison cells for millions of people.

I don't know what happened to the axis. It must have fallen out of fashion. The government is moribund.

Last _{vive la revolution} Post

[Swatopluk]

I think the French wrote the textbook on modern rioting.

I am worried about the slow but steady growth of the AFD ("Alternative for Germany") around here. It's said that Germany always came late politically (die verspätete Nation) and that was bad. Now we develop a New Right like all the other European nations have decades ago*. All that's missing is a charismatic Führer figure.

Last _{fortunately charisma is in very short supply in German politics} Post

*Putin is of course involved but only as a catalyst.

[Aphos]

Last _{at least you don't have Trump} Post

[Swatopluk]

At least not in high office.
Regardless of Boris, parliamentary systems seem to be a bit more robust on that front.
As does lack of a two-party system with 'winner-takes-all'

Last _{no protection from collective stupidity though} Post

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There is no safety in politics.
--------
Swato, question: how energy intensive is converting CO2 to something like limestone or calcite? Also what would be the yield? I was thinking that a carbon capture scenario could be viable as carbon offsets (more than to convince a power plant to pay extra for being a decent citizen).

Last _{you can't ask those who pollute to clean after themselves because that would be communism!} Post

[Swatopluk]

The standard procedure is to let the CO2 pass through a solution of hydroxide (NaOH for Soda, KOH for potash, Ca(OH)2 for chalk/lime etc.) Unfortunately in the last case that is produced FROM the carbonate, so the net CO2 capture would be zero (actually negative since it takes lot of energy to burn lime into the hydroxide). NaOH and KOH are produced from the chlorides, so that would not be the problem (but still huge amounts of energy are needed). Plus, carbonate of calcium dissolves again as bicarbonate, if more CO2 is pressed into the solution.
What is thought about is the very slow geological process, i.e. to press the CO2 into a suitable geological formation (or the one that the natural gas was extracted from) and then to wait a few thousand years.
The main current technical problem with carbon capture at the power plant is that the power plant has to run on pure oxygen not air because otherwise the nitrogen will simply flood the system*. If the system runs on pure oxygen, all exhaust will be water soluble and can thus be separated relatively easily. In reality this is a two step process with the first solvent being something else because CO2 dissolves in water only rather slowly. The CO2 is then either driven out of that solvent and pumped into the place of disposal (see geological capture above) or transfered into the alkaline solution for precipitation as carbonate.
The main cost factors are thus the capture solvents (plus the enrgy for the transfer processes) and the energy needed to separate nitrogen from oxygen. The latter has become much cheaper and quicker via membrane processes as opposed to the old fractured distillation of liquified gases but is still nergy intensive. Currently about a third of the energy yielded from fossil fuel has to be used for the complete capture process of the CO2 from it.

*that's also the reason why extracting CO2 from the air is no solution for the runaway greenhouse effect. It's far too diluted to be technically viable at reasonable costs. E.g. circular breathing diving gear with a CO2 absorption unit only reduces the CO2 fraction to values that make the circulating air breathable again (< 4%) but still far above normal atmospheric values (about 400 ppm). To get those low values further reduced is complicated, energy intensive and expensive.

Last _{That's the basics. I am no expert on the matter and would have look up anything beyond.} Post

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I was looking into carbon offsets and apparently most of them are BS which got me thinking, you should be able to sell carbon offsets for a higher price if you guarantee the offset is real, that is the actual amount of CO2 purchased as offset is no longer in the atmosphere; from that point you move to carbon capture* because that is the only real way to do that. Obviously the easiest way to capture said carbon is at the emission point as you mentioned, which then goes to the actual crux of the matter: assuming you are using renewables to get the energy for the capture you are still enabling the emissions. At that point it makes more sense to use the energy to replace the emitters, but that in itself is another problem.

I guess it makes more sense to use the energy to desalinate and pump water into an arid area and plant trees...**

*any way possible, from planting trees, feeding algae, or pumping it underground.
**not an actual solution for the current climate crisis due to the scale but a realistic way to do offsets.

Last _frustrating Post