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Environmental News

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by tochatihu, Oct 22, 2015.

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  1. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Speaking of oxygen,

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-02112-8

    Balbi and Frank contend that technology could not start on any planet without high-enough [O2]. It could not get fired up. Don't see how that could be disproven ...
     
    #2181 tochatihu, Jan 3, 2024
  2. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    I do enjoy a portabella sandwich/burger once in awhile. Unfortunately, not enough people do the traditional veggie alternatives to have much impact on the environment.
     
    #2182 Trollbait, Jan 4, 2024
  3. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    this seems energy intensive:

    46289148
     
    #2183 bisco, Jan 4, 2024
  4. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Why Japan had opted to not salt roads(at least in the past). Guess we have just become to dependent to it back when the salt was local.

    Then there is the issue of increased salinity in local water. Didn't you once comment on that in your well?
     
    #2184 Trollbait, Jan 5, 2024
  5. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    good memory. we live across from an elementary school, and just keep salting the road from the start of a storm to the end.
    i had to put a reverse osmosis system under the kitchen sink.
     
    #2185 bisco, Jan 5, 2024
  6. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    You would think as water percolated down to a well (at least one that's under a few hundred feet) that the salts would be filtered out.
    .
     
    #2186 hill, Jan 5, 2024
  7. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    it could be that it isn't even the road salt, but none of my neighbors have it, and we're the only ones who live right between the entrance and exit of the school.
    it kills all the grass along the street in front of our house. we finally replaced it with stone, but what a pain to maintain.
     
    #2187 bisco, Jan 5, 2024
  8. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    The salt fully dissolves into the water, so it is itself a liquid at that point. Physical filtering won't work. Need something that chemically reacts with the salt to remove or separate it from the water. If that something was plentiful, desalinating seawater wouldn't be an issue.
     
    #2188 Trollbait, Jan 5, 2024
    tochatihu and fuzzy1 like this.
  9. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    This implication is correct. Filtration by its physical meaning can only remove solids. Dissolved ions can be dealt with by ionic exchange, but that is a meaningful verb. Exchange. Removing sodium releases some other cation (of your choice); removing chloride likewise releases some anion. One could be clever about it and exchange for ammonium and nitrate. Then arrange for archaebacteria to exhale those nitrogens as gaseous N2. But I don't know of anyone ever attacking saline water in that way. This weakly implies it would fail.

    High-value ions (such as those containing N and P) should be removed by biological processes as soil water becomes groundwater. Usually they are, so only 'junk' ions (that nobody much wants, Like Na+ and Cl-, sorry) make the trip to groundwater. If N and P containing ions make the trip, somebody upstairs made some mistakes.

    Meanwhile, ion exchange is a great tool to learn which ions are in soil solution. Used by many including your humble correspondent. Nylon footie socks and salad spinners are involved :)

    Meanwhile, others may use filtration in a non-technical sense to mean other things. On your own there.
     
    #2189 tochatihu, Jan 6, 2024
  10. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Young ones first studying biogeochemistry ought to meditate on why Na+ and Cl- dominate seawater, and ions of N, P, Fe and SI are in short supply. If'n they don't, teacher ain't teaching.

    This is spoz to lead to curiosity about how much salt there is in the sea. Good. Then the kiddies are spoz to look at global river outputs of Na+ and Cl-. And be surprised to figure out that only ~100 million years of salt is there. not 4600 or whatever million year's worth.

    This leads to plate tectonics specifically subduction at plate boundaries. The big daddy geo in biogeochemistry. Whole thing is spoz to be a lot of fun. We bring out nylon footie socks and salad spinners if needed to spice things up.
     
    #2190 tochatihu, Jan 6, 2024
  11. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    There are about 3000 billion trees on earth (see Tom Crowther ETH Zurich) of which 800 billion are in tropics. In tropics, about 2% of tree species account for 50% of the trees:

    Scientists name the commonest tropical tree s | EurekAlert!

    This is important because tropical forests 'do what they do' mostly with about 1000 tree species. That number is approachable for physiological research, while total number of tropical tree species is much larger, (actually) unknown, and too many to examine.

    So if we chose to, we could explore 1000 tropical tree species in terms of physiology and nutrient cycling. It could usefully inform global ecology confronting many changes. I say 'could' because no one has announced funded plans to do it.

    ==
    In temperate forest biome there are about 50 dominant tree species to examine. In boreal forest biome there are about 5. So as one moves away from equator, the whole thing gets easier. But not yet being done, I'm sorry to say.
     
    #2191 tochatihu, Jan 11, 2024
  12. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    #2192 tochatihu, Jan 12, 2024
  13. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Keep meaning to befriend the rows at work.
     
    #2193 Trollbait, Jan 12, 2024
  14. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    #2194 Trollbait, Jan 13, 2024
  15. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    #2195 tochatihu, Jan 18, 2024
  16. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    shipments seem better
     
    #2196 bisco, Jan 18, 2024
  17. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    #2197 tochatihu, Jan 18, 2024
    fuzzy1 likes this.
  18. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    #2198 fuzzy1, Jan 18, 2024
  19. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    I don't know where converting whole prime farm fields to PV fields. Is happening.

    PV promoters suggest that where govt incentives are good and grid tie is handy, (ex) farmers can net $10 thousand per acre per year, passively, without doing all that farm work. I presume they are working debt service into that. With all those arranged, it does look pretty darn attractive.
     
    #2199 tochatihu, Jan 20, 2024
  20. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    I seem to remember seeing quite a few such locations, overseas as well as here. Will have to note future examples. The most that come to mind right now were visible on a flight during our Chile vacation two months ago, returning to Santiago from Atacama (Calama), though many of those may have been on more dry lands than prime ag lands.

    Dad's farm received a PV field-lease solicitation a couple years ago, though I didn't follow up for details. $10k/acre/yr? Hot damn, that is vastly better than that dry-land (no meaningful irrigation available) farm-ranch has ever done. As operated now, it isn't commercially viable, more a personal subsistence or hobby farm. 100 acres of hay crop turned to PV at that rate would change everything. Though we wouldn't convert any actual crop lands, just a few hundred acres of un-tillable rocky pasture.

    OTOH, I don't know why anyone would pay that lease price for land they could buy outright for significantly less. There has to be some catch hidden there ...
     
    #2200 fuzzy1, Jan 20, 2024
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2024
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