Re: Climate Remediation Engineering - Size of Problem

On 8/05/2025 12:08 am, john larkin wrote:

On Wed, 7 May 2025 10:10:17 +0100, liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid
(Liz Tuddenham) wrote:
 

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:
>
[...]

an e-bike doesn't
generate any CO2.

>
I am surprised that someone with your intelligence and knowledge should
repeat such a fallacy.
>
Manufacture of vehicle
Manufacture of batteries
Consumables (tyres, battery etc.)
Electricity generations (and the cost of making and maintaining the
plant)
Road making and maintenance (tarmac refining, transport & installation;
road 'wetal'; concrete; street furniture; lighting )
Disposal

 Bicycles need paved roads to be efficient. And farmers won't take tons
of fertilizer or kilotons of water to the farm on bicycles, or tons of
rice to market on bicycles.

Perhaps not, but electric trucks would work fine.

People who live way up the food chain imagine all sorts of crazy
things. They should spend a year working on a farm.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia had to hire a couple of sociologists to work out how to get farmers to take advantage of new scientific and technological advances.
The trick turned out to be finding a few farmers who were less ignorant and conservative than their neighbours, and concentrating on them. When the more accessible farmers started making more money than their neighbours, the neighbours started copying them.
I went to board school in Tasmania with a bunch of farmer's kids. A couple of them were smart enough to get helped that way. I didn't stay in touch with any of them, but my younger brother did.
My wife went to boarding school in Tasmania too, and at least one of her friends from that period ended up marrying a guy who was equally smart, who grew up in the same town that I did. I never met him there, but worked with his younger brother at the local titanium oxide refinery, as my summer job when I was an undergraduate.
His elder brother has died, and has a Tasmanian cosmic ray observatory named after him.
A year working on a farm might help, if you picked the right farm.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney