Well, as it turns out, humans are the problem. There's just too damn many of them, stripping the planet of its resources and turning it into a giant midden. It hits home for me every time I crawl out of my remote cabin in the woods and have to rub shoulders with the great unwashed masses. I have no idea how you people can stand it.

There are only two (non-exclusive) solutions.

(1) Space! Spread out, harvest the resources of the solar system and beyond, dump waste where it will do no harm (bury nuclear waste on the far side of the moon, that always works well in fiction) and lower the burden of human density on Earth.

(2) Zombie apocalypse. Now. If only one in ten survivie it's still too many.

Contributing to about the same degree as a massive ship contributes to changing the sea level.

Dump 7 billion aircraft carriers into the sea and then get back to me.

Which is rather point re:China i.e. there's a LOT of people there.

Contributing to about the same degree as a massive ship contributes to changing the sea level.

Dump 7 billion aircraft carriers into the sea and then get back to me.

Which is rather point re:China i.e. there's a LOT of people there.

Yes, but not nearly enough (and not nearly 7 billion aircraft carriers, either). Not faintly remotely.

It is a rather non-trivial piece of math homework to calculate what amount of water it would take to rise the oceans by so-and-so much because Earth isn't really a sphere (other than what we commonly assume) and it's not fully covered in water either, and so on.

Luckily, people who are being paid for such things and who have nothing better to do, have done the tedious task of determining the total surface of land mass as well as oceans with rather good accuracy, the latter being known as 360,570,000 km2. Which makes our life a lot easier.

One square kilometer (km2) contains one million square meters. A cubic meter of sea water weights almost exactly one ton. So, in order to raise the water level in a 1km2 basin by 10cm (slightly less than 4 inches), roughly 100,000 tons are needed.

displacement of a nimitz-class aircraft carrier is 100,000 tons

In other words (taking that number for granted, and not verifying it) this means a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier will raise the level on an isolated 1km2 body of water by 4 inches.

Which means you would need 360,570,000 aircraft carriers of that size for the same effect globally. That's an awful lot of really big ships. Assuming a Chinese family under the two-child policy has 4 members, it would mean every 5th Chinese family owns an aircraft carrier!

I think you've rather missed the point here. We aren't discussing how many aircraft carriers China have.

As for alcohol, it carries less energy per unit of mass (using more energy to haul it around) and causes greater wear on motors (producing motors consumes a lot of energy), and it creates huge amounts of CO2 during fermentation and requires a huge amount of energy to distill, too. But of course those don't count because you don't see them when you burn the bio-fuel. Oh, I'm so good, I feel so righteous by doing something good for the planet. Sustainable, yay.

Unless I misunderstand how the fermentation process works, it "doesn't count" because the CO2 was a part of the plant in the first place. The idea behind biofuel is that you're "borrowing" carbon from the atmosphere for a short time and then putting it back when you're done, meaning that overall you aren't changing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Remember, the problem we're trying to solve isn't so much releasing CO2, it's releasing carbon that had previously been sequestered away in oil deposits millions of years ago, causing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to go back up to levels that could disturb our ecosystems to the point where they can no longer sustain human civilization in the long term. Frankly, I'm a bit bemused that you're in this conversation at all (apparently) without understanding that.

In case they really get liquidated, it's 117,000 people without a job, and 160 billion less domestic product.

And that's terrible. Long-term sustainability of human civilization as a whole is never worth sacrificing a few people's jobs and money! Not that I particularly agree with the brand of Green you're talking about. I'm pro-nuclear, especially fusion if we can make that work.

And that's terrible. Long-term sustainability of human civilization as a whole is never worth sacrificing a few people's jobs and money! Not that I particularly agree with the brand of Green you're talking about. I'm pro-nuclear, especially fusion if we can make that work.

It is indeed really terrible if you do it just because you are too stupid (which is the case here). I wouldn't complain if this was to save the planet, or even if it didn't save the planet but would mean that we are a lot "safer" (because, you know, there's no evil noocular radiation next door).

However, instead of producing reasonably safe nuclear energy ourselves, we are now buying totally unsafe nuclear energy from a neighbouring country, and we have an electricity net which is in some parts close to its limits under normal operation since energy must be re-routed. Plus, there is now nobody doing the maintenance...

For that, it is certainly not worth throwing away the jobs of a hundred thousand people and ruining multi-billion euro companies.

I would wholeheartedly agree with the "No to nookular" crowd if they had a working solution. Life has to go on, however. Going back to the stone age is not a solution, and replacing a moderately unsafe thing with a catastrophically unsafe thing is no solution either.

Unless I misunderstand how the fermentation process works, it "doesn't count" because the CO2 was a part of the plant in the first place.

Unluckily, that's not the case, would be nice if it was like this.

Scratch that, you are of course right there. The grow-ferment part recycles atoms that the plant took from the atmosphere the year before. That part is indeed CO2 neutral (and energy-neutral if you neglect the heat produced by the yeast, which is rather small, and take the sun's energy for "free", which it basically is).

Of course that doesn't make the distillation process energy-neutral (or CO2 neutral), or invalidate all the other disadvantages (weight, wear, CO).

Of course that doesn't make the distillation process energy-neutral (or CO2 neutral), or invalidate all the other disadvantages (weight, wear, CO).

Ethanol's energy density is a little less than that of gasoline, but it isn't terrible in the grand scheme of things. (Methanol fuels can actually be more efficient than gasoline, but have additional hazards along with production issues from what I remember. Edit- Annoyingly I can't remember the name of it and it is annoying me that I can't find it now. I'm 99% sure it was based a converted methanol fuel that allowed it to bind up more energy density than gasoline, and could be done based on solar heating and a catalyst.)

Also the distillation process can be just as energy neutral or better. We are seeing full solar setups being deployed with multi-use heating systems. The same energy being used to distil and then condense Ethanol is also in turn used to supplement hot water systems. More common are wide range bio-fuel systems, where the sugar/starch bearing parts of the plant matter are stripped out for use in producing the alcohol, while the less useful parts of the plant are dried and used for external combustion.

Net carbon release in such systems can actually also be negative, depending on plant matter and combustion method, as some amount of carbon solids are able to be captured rather than released into the atmosphere.

Engine wear issues may be addressed by, shockingly, using engines designed specifically for ethanol

My personal views lean towards low impact hydro while changing our concept of how we build our communities and travel between them. Bio-fuels are kind of a "Good idea, but wrong direction" in my views, and are more like slapping on a bandaid rather than trying to fix the things that are actual problems. For example: Biofuels don't do anything to address poverty or food security, where concepts such as moving our building styles towards an 'earthship' like architecture can help reduce housing and food supply costs.

Distillation need energy and in grand scheme that can't be CO2 neutral before every source of energy that we use is CO2 neutral. Using eco energy isn't good thing. Producing eco energy is.

I think you've rather missed the point here. We aren't discussing how many aircraft carriers China have.

I'll break down the analogies since it is you who is missing the point.

The argument against your original (ignorant) statement was that if a significant number of humans join the bandwaggon and actively start saving energy and start being more aware, it will have a significant impact on the environment.

Saying "what I do doesn't make a difference because I'm insignificant" is easily the most ignorant thing you could possibly say, ever. It's right up there with "I don't care if the NSA scans my files; I have nothing to hide" or "I don't care about freedom of speech; I have nothing to say".

What you do is precisely the only thing that can make a difference, because only you are in control of what you do. Having the attitude you have is unfortunately what most people's attitude is, which just further proves my point of joint effort (or in this case, lack thereof) being significant, because it may just be dooming us all.