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thoughts on recycling "myths" by Jive
taken from a discussion via private messages re: penn and teller's episode of bullshit (aptly named) about recycling... not intended as passive aggressive argument in any way. keeping to expand on/consider after sleep.
It's not about energy used to make them so much as it is where the plastics wind up if we don't reuse them. Even if it takes more energy to recycle them--which I doubt, once you take into account the energy needed to obtain the crude oil (drilling, pumping, trucking to processing plants, etc.), process the crude into refined oils (used mainly for fuels) and the "waste" product of cellulose made into plastics--it wouldn't be a proper reason to avoid recycling.
The oceans are literally filled with plastics from landfills that are far over their limit. We dump plastics, which do not biodegrade, into pits in the ground which flood and leak into the water system... or even just directly into the ocean, itself.
Plastic makes up 90+% of pollution in the ocean, and 80% of that plastic comes from flooded landfills. There's currently basically NO clean up effort being made. We're seeing more and more marine animals dead with stomachs filled with plastic. The floating "garbage patch" that everyone was so concerned about (the size of TX) is no longer an isolated thing... the entire ocean is basically filling up with plastics. There are entire beaches made of plastic particles now... which would be kind of cool, if not for the implications.
Our oceans are, sadly, mostly a lost resource at this point. Between pollution, overfishing, and acidification from global warming (mostly animal agriculture related)/ocean floor fracking (releases methane directly into the water), we've already started an irreversible loss of coral reef fauna.
The book "eaarth" by Bill McKibbens goes into that in a bit more detail, but that's sort of a different discussion altogether.
Frankly, this is the sort of reason I don't trust that show as far as I can kick it. They don't do their research fully, and Penn is a close-minded dick... while it's kind of funny to laugh if he's confirming your bias already--as he's doing for most of America--he's spreading wild misinformation in the process because it satisfies HIS needs as a mouthpiece with a personal view to push.
So, basically, in summation, recycling is still a necessary thing, because the point isn't necessarily to conserve energy so much as it is to reuse resources that are causing mass harm. We need to stop thinking of plastics as disposable at all.
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That's one of the problems I definitely have... the lack of fact-checking in many shows and documentaries and the like is appalling. Most of the time, when I watch documentaries (and recommend them), I have to bear in mind that they're likely missing major points, even if I agree with them.
A recent example is "End of the Line," a documentary about overfishing. The entire documentary was about how tuna are likely to go extinct soon, the effects of long lines and trawling, etc... and then, they suggested that you buy "sustainably sourced" fish instead of just forgoing fish altogether.
In what world is it sane to eliminate up to 90% of adult members of a species that takes nearly a decade to reach sexual maturity... then call any harvest of them sustainable?And that's obviously off topic, but it's just an illustration of how huge some blind spots can be... because their culture told them that to tell other people "STOP eating this fish" is rude or unrealistic, they avoided reaching the obvious conclusion. Yet those same people will still raise a fuss over poached tigers and pandas and rhinos. It's disheartening.
I wish the US would invest money in some renewable/sustainable energy sources, but since they view it as competition for the oil companies, that's not likely to happen any time soon.
My personal favorites are algae biofuels, but solar and wind energy (turbines instead of mills to avoid bird/bat death) are also high on my list. Ship some of that tech over here please.-
One of my Siblings is studying Biomedical and has this Jar of algae he's using as a bioreactor just sitting on his window sill. It just looks so gross, but it is making some kind of combustible run-off. Its something you could have in your own home and with enough of it; fuel a small car. Like a really small car, that's RC unless you have a vat of it and the fuel refined (and made into an appropriate mixture) to work in a larger car.
I also want to talk about Blue-Green Algae and how its used in Chinese Farming and other wonders (and problems) of the Green Revolution but my brain is failing and I now need sleep.
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Algae makes a lot of oil per amount grown, enough to be comparable to petroleum if we farm it right... and considering how easily it grows out of control, I don't see that being too difficult. It's just that no one's really dumping a lot of funds into it right now.
Basically if you dry it out and run it through a press, take that oil and add some other cheap to get chemicals and heat, you can make biodiesel. Gasoline's a little harder, because it's more chemically complex... but it's also unnecessary and redundant if we revert most engines to diesel.Diesel engines can run on barely-refined oils... the first ones (created by Rudolph Diesel) actually ran on peanut based biodiesel!
I get really fucking excited about pond scum, though. It's sort of ridiculous.Sleep well.
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Peanuts are easy to grow but harder to harvest as they grow underground. They were proposed as this wonder crop for Africa but optimism was really inflated. I really love learning about the Green Revolution as has so many examples were we've tried doing science and using technology but had problems in applying it. My favourite problem (If one could say that, it's like saying what you're favourite disease is) was the instructions and nutrient requirements for GM Plants weren't in a local language, most of it if not all was written in English rather than Hindi, so a lot of crops failed and a lot of farmers committed suicide as they're livelihood were ruined. Those deaths were entirely avoidable, if someone just thought about how a person would go about using them or doing QA to make sure it was to be understood, which is something that's part of every design product and methodology in every industry.
I studied Chemistry as a degree, and one thing that does amaze me is the Haber Process. Yay, we can use it to make fertilizer and increase crop yields, oh wait, it produces ammonia which is really explosive and was used during war in the twentieth century. We solve one problem and end up making more, but I think there's a lot of wisdom in finding out how we solved past problems or didn't and avoid those methods, in favour of newer ideas and tools.
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I doubt that the instructions being in English had as much to do with it as the crops' monoculture and chemical fertilizer necessitation... is that even a word? I'm not sure. If not, it should be.
The Indians had very advanced agriculture for thousands of years, as did many non-European groups. The Green Revolution did very little to actually help India, given that after a few years, the crops failed magnificently due to topsoil destruction. In true Malthusian fashion, their population had boomed, so now they're experiencing worse food shortages than when they started out.
I'd recommend looking up the works of Vandana Shiva. The documentary Dirt! the Movie is an entertaining look, but there are more papers and articles out there than you can shake a stick at that illustrate and back up the claims therein better.I do not trust GM technology in the way it is currently used specifically because of its history and lack of foresight. Also considering the fact that the US government is allowing patents on food, the people who are in control of the technology, and the absolute ignorance of exactly what the side effects of such modification is... I cannot bring myself to assume much good of it.
I will say this: they teach you that GMOs are great for "feeding people" in school... I know because it's rampantly handed down to students here, as well. But if that was the case, we already have more than enough food to feed everyone. We waste 30-50% of food here in the US, and what we throw away could more than feed the rest of the world's hungry... it's not about feeding the world. If it was, Monsanto, Bayer, and Dow could pony up some cash and ship that food to hungry people. But they don't do that... for the same reason they sue poor organic farmers out of business for "stealing" when their fields are contaminated with GE crops against their will... because it's about controlling the food supply.Also consider how heavily and vehemently they lobby against GM labeling. Not prohibition or even restraint, but labeling so people know what they're buying. How deceptive can you be...? And why? Because you're afraid people will avoid your products, and this is about profit, not benefiting the consumer or science at large.
I do not trust capitalist ventures hiding behind a mask of "for the greater good," because there's always a profit motive... and that will suck the humanity out every time. These corporations are bound by US law to put their shareholders' wallets above the benefit or harm done to consumers, the environment, the stability of the food supply, etc.
I would much rather see less corporate-controlled, natural and sustainable methods of farming being used. We can feed everyone, and we can do it without paying the company who gave us Agent Orange billions. It's just unnecessary at best and potentially incredibly harmful at worst... why gamble?
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the side effects of such modification ARE
not is
I should proofread
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That has always been my impression, that recycling was more about reusing things to prevent massive amounts of waste than it was to conserve materials or energy or anything of that sort. I've never even thought about it in that way. Except maybe for recycling paper, since I've always been told that is a matter of conserving resources.
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Well, you can get paid for recycling scrap metals of all kinds here, but when I tote my plastics, glass, and papers to the recycling center here, I always assumed it cost the city money. The point wasn't monetary gain, so I never really considered that.
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Vosyl
Penn & Teller are similar to why I didn't really take to Freakinomics, or a variety of T.E.D. Talks. Once a book's been published or TV segment run it'll persist long after the information has been found to be either outdated with our current understanding, or that the information was wrong from the get go (or unfounded). Some newspapers make for this by allowing following issues to deliver corrections, blogs allow people to comment, and Academic Journals allow sections for papers to be published as full-length responses and reviews of past-literature to see how it stands with the latest findings.
I ended up writing the other day to a Psychology Blogsite as they had opted for a David Wang style piece; similar to Six Simple truths of "Nine reasons why you fail", but an accusatory tone is ineffective for self-help with what's being published concerning emotional intelligence. Where it's more effective to set up an environment for people to actualize their goals, than just telling them it's XYZ-youneedmoreJezuz-etc are the reasons they're failing to do what they want.
I can't remember if it was P&T a room mate watched but they were convinced Volcanos produce more CO2 than human activity. I would love for Volcanos to produce more CO2 than us, if we cut emissions to let them. The ash also reflects heat back past the thermosphere similar to the albedo effect. Like others in Scotland that took up Electronic Engineer (either as a degree or as a hobby) a lot of us are really excited about renewables, they pose a number of design challenges and grant funding is never is short supply (as well with the idea that making something that could save the planet or delay disaster at least, does have a psychological component for driving ideas) by the first year of a degree or HNC everyone will have at least built a solar cell.