2020 From a Conservation Perspective

[BarryBobPosthole]

Julie and I were talking about this yesterday. We don’t get a ton of air traffic here like big cities, but during the pandemic one of the biggest things we noticed was the quiet outside. Hardly any aircraft noise and no jet contrails for almost the whole year! No rusty horizons from the auto pollution, no ozone alerts, and brilliantly clear blue skies. It was noticeable enough that itwas a topic on almost every fishing trip Birddog and I made last summer.
Maybe it wasn’tas noticeable where you are if you’re lucky enough to live where youget these conditions all the time.

So I looked it up and sure enough NASA has studied it. Here’s a quotefrom it.
“ The researchers received data from 46 countries—a total of 5,756 observation sites on the ground—relaying hourly atmospheric composition measurements in near-real time. On a city-level, 50 of the 61 analyzed cities show nitrogen dioxide reductions between 20-50%.”

Now that’s a lot of air pollution. And NO2 is primarily from fossil fuels burned.

Of course, its not possible to just boom, stop using them. But last year ought to show us what the prize can be if we can reduce our usage in practical ways. (I wouldn’t consider pandemics practical)

I know this, you don’t have to be a Sr Noticer to notice a huge difference here. How was it where you live?

BKB

[Big Skyz]

Won't make any difference in regards to fossil fuels unless China takes the lead on this to reduce or eliminate dependency on them.
https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/05/download-1.png

[BarryBobPosthole]

Sounds like you think we should follow China’s leadership then? I don’t get that.

BKB

[Thumper]

I haven't noticed a change in air clarity as we don't really have a problem here ... no hills/mountains with valleys, plus plenty of sea breezes and rain to clear the air.

We don't get a lot of air traffic as that all goes to Tampa or Orlando, but the major difference was noticed last year. We have the second largest airshow in the country here every year, but it was cancelled due to Covid last year. I think they use the lake we're on as a visual to turn around when doing the airshow, so I can usually sit on the pool deck and see as much, or more than the spectators at the actual show. They did have the show this year, but it seemed different for some reason. Like less traffic maybe? Not sure really.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Florida must be a dick shaped geographical oddity I reckon.

BKB

[DeputyDog]

Sounds like you think we should follow China’s leadership then? I don’t get that.

BKB

I’m pretty sure his point was China is the worst offender of all the nations and even if everyone else changes, they probably won’t, and the amount of change won’t be significant.


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[BarryBobPosthole]

Yep, and I agree China needs to get on board in order for it be totally solved. But where I separate from that is that just because they aren’t that anything anyone else does is futile. That was the whole point of my example of how things changed duringthe pandemic. Except in Florida, of course.
To use a real life example, in my world our drinking water supply comes from the watershed of the Ozarks and their foothills in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. Chicken farmers in Arkansas and Oklahoma have polluted the very rivers we get our drinking eater from. Just because Arkansas won’t clean up their point sources of that problem, does that mean we shouldn’t make Oklahoma farmers clean up theirs?
So, I don’t disagree with the point about China but I think its too easy a cop out to continue doing almost nothing.

One last China point, they are driven by the consumer market. Their addiction to US consumers isxas bigcas our addiction to their products. We have more powers of persuasion than we think.

BKB

[johnboy]

Speaking of China, do you think the CCP will ever have to face the music for what they have done to their own country and the rest of the world? Nah, never happen.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Karma has a way of happening but its way too damn slow for me too John! I think the chickens will come home to roost on human rights abuses and on the terrible damage they’ve done to their cities and people. Whether we might look at it and feel like its justice is a whole nother onion.

BKB

[johnboy]

Not only their cities and people but the rest of us as well. I believe in Karma and I hope you're right but I have no faith that our 'people in power' will put the interests of their country and in fact the world, ahead of their own personal advantage. I have become the total cynic when it comes to that. I guess we live in interesting times.

[johnboy]

We watched an interesting old movie last night - Judgement at Nuremberg which got me thinking that a Nuremberg style trial would be appropriate for all the heads of business that are profiting from CCP atrocities. Whatcha think of them apples, Tim Cook?

[Trav]

So when you selling your gas guzzling Tundra & bass boat?

[BarryBobPosthole]

When I can get an electric one.

BKB

[Thumper]

Ford just introduced their electric F150. ;)

[BarryBobPosthole]

When I can get an electric one that ain’t a Ford!

BKB

[Chicken Dinner]

Won't make any difference in regards to fossil fuels unless China takes the lead on this to reduce or eliminate dependency on them.
https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/05/download-1.png

I wonder what this chart would look like if it was done on a per capita basis.


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[BarryBobPosthole]

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-per-capita

Why thank you for asking sir. It’d look like this.

BKB

[Chicken Dinner]

It’s almost like I already knew the answer.[emoji12]


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[BarryBobPosthole]

You numbers guys are all alike!
BKB

[Chicken Dinner]

You numbers guys are all alike!
BKB

[emoji56]

It doesn’t take away from BS’ over all point completely. At the end of the day, China and India have over a billion people each and the majority live in abject poverty compared to the US and Germany. As a result their economies are growing at a rate way faster than ours and asking them to cut their carbon usage has a much higher human toll. The challenge is for the West to not abdicate leadership and work with them to grow ina way that minimizes the impact.


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[BarryBobPosthole]

Which is why companies take their work offshore. When you can hire people in a developing country for 1/3 or 1/4 of the cost of a US based employee and not have to pay bennies then you can afford a lot of stupid mistakes they make. They will never do the qulity of work that the US employees do but companies only care about EBITDA.

But that strays from the point. I don’t give two fucks what China or India do about pollution when it comes to weaning ourseves from fossil fuels. We claim that we’re energy independent but we’re not and never have been. Maybe if we wanna pay $5.00 a gallon, yep we could supply enough oil for ourselves. I doubt it.

We can upgrade our coal power plants to natural gas, rebuild our grid, and invest some money into solar and wind and it won’t make us fossil fuel free but it’ll make what we do extract fulfill that much more of our needs. and it will remove millions of tons of pollution from the air and water. As long as we demand a perfect solution before we make a commitment to effing do it, we’ll continue to tweedle our thumbs and cringe every time a thrid world fucker in the middle east or Russisa gets a boner.
BKB