[ralfy]

Cross-posted:

"If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble"

https://theconversation.com/if-everyone ... uble-43905

[dohboi]

And that's because...

...

...

wait for it...

It's because they choose to continue to fly at about average Western rates.

How about you!??

[Graeme]

Sweden Is The “World’s Most Sustainable Country,” According To Study

The “most sustainable country in the world” is Sweden, according to a new study/ranking from the investment company RobecoSAM.

Despite winning the top spot, the country ‘only’ received a score of 8 out of 10 — with the win being the result of analyses incorporating factors such as governance, environmental conditions, and the social climate.

The study (which can be found here) noted that the country’s support of “liberty and equality,” investment into its education system, and its reported ability to respond to environmental threats contributed to the high ranking.

Following relatively close behind Sweden in this year’s study were the countries of Switzerland and Norway — neighbors (or nearly so in the case of Switzerland) with many similar qualities to Sweden.

Despite the above-mentioned qualities, the country didn’t rank particularly highly with regard to renewable energy or overall energy usage levels — with the nation ranking third for renewable power capacity per capita.

With regard to the study as a whole, interestingly, the UK managed to come in 4th — owing to fairly “good” emissions levels, and (supposedly) fairly low environmental risk.

cleantechnica

[dohboi]

Obviously the measures to come up with such a judgment are skewed in all sorts of ways that have little to do with the essential definition of ecological sustainability. A true measure of most sustainable country would go more or less in order from most of the poorest countries on the planet being first and most of the richest being last.

But that's not a very good way to 'sell' sustainability, though it is a more truthful way.

But in our world, sales always trumps truth.

[Newfie]

Right Dohboi, simply the fact that in Sweden you need to heat whereas in warmer climes you don't is telling.

[dohboi]

What I have long suspected/concluded, but had no study to back me up:

http://www.exposingtruth.com/new-un-rep ... -included/

New UN report finds almost no industry profitable if environmental costs were included

So it's all really smoke and mirrors, not just the financial shenanigans.

Pretty much all of industrial society adds no net value (and as we see all around us, most of it obliterates the things that are of deepest, most essential and most irreplaceable value--the basic elements that allow for a functioning biosphere).

As Wendel Berry put it: "We thought we were getting something for nothing, but we were getting nothing for everything."

[onlooker]

It has always struck me as a Faustian deal or deal with the Devil, living wantonly and carelessly today at the expense of tomorrow. Economics in fact have a euphemism for this they call it externalities or things outside of their profitability equations. Externalities meaning the Earth.

[dohboi]

"Faustian deal or deal with the Devil"

Did Faust make some deals with somebody else that I didn't hear about??

Nor really, that story/mythology (in the deep, not the dismissive, sense) is one example of how we have had warnings (at least in a general sense) within the mainstream of Western culture for a long time warning us not to go down the path we actually took.

[onlooker]

for the benefit of those who did not know about Faust haha

[Newfie]

Don’t forget water. Lots of similarity to peak oil in fossil water stores being depleted.

[Tanada]

Don’t forget water. Lots of similarity to peak oil in fossil water stores being depleted.

For just a moment when I read that I was thinking of all the fossil hydrogen in those hydrocarbon fuels that is combining with oxygen to make water. As has been pointed out from time to time every gallon of Gasoline or Diesel burned in a vehicle in Phoenix, AZ is adding as much water vapor as a gallon of water boiled dry in a pot on a stove. Think about that millions of gallons of fossil water returned to the atmosphere after millions of years of sequestration as fossil fuels. For natural gas burning electric plants the numbers are far worse. For every gallon of liquid methane burned two gallons of water are produced. It takes 7.48 gallons of liquid to equal 1 cubic feet volume. It takes 584 cubic feet of gas to make 1 cubic foot of LNG. So for every cubic foot of LNG burned you produce 14.96 or for convenience 15 gallons of water as dispersed vapor. All 15 gallons of that water will be precipitated back out of the atmosphere sooner or later down wind of the power station.

To me the way we ignore all this water vapor is a bit interesting. Sure when it comes to liquid fossil fuels like petroleum pretty much every barrel extracted is replaced with a barrel of water taking up the same pore space in the rock matrix. But when you are talking about natural gas you are talking about a different situation. A lot of the gas we burn comes from "dry rock formations" and I can pretty well promise we are not injecting water down into those fields as we extract the gas. Another large fraction is associated gas that comes out mixed with petroleum. In many but far from all of those fields the petroleum is replaced with water either from natural or artificial means.

However in many if not most cases the gas that comes with the oil is about the same as the carbonation in a bottle of beer or soda, the gas is dissolved into the liquid so it doesn't take up much extra space in the reservoir rock. That is why you can inject CO2 into a mostly depleted oil formation. The CO2 dissolves into the petroleum and provides a pressure drive by the bubbles expanding as the oil flows up the extraction pipe. At least AIUI. In KSA they have a group of large plants that are dedicated to removing the dissolved natural gas and water from the crude as it comes out of the well. The water is injected back into the formation, the gas is flared or sold as a commodity. Either way the water replaces the crude in the formation because it is denser than the petroleum and naturally seeks its density level.

In any case the world is consuming around 360 Billion cubic feet of natural gas aka 616 million cubic feet of LNG every day. At a 2:1 ratio that makes 1.232 billion cubic feet of newly released fossil water every day. That works out to a little over 4 feet of water distributed over a square mile or about a tenth of an inch over an area of 500 square miles. Every day. 365 days of the year. Year after year after year.

[Newfie]

Tanada,

Yes it is water. But is that water available for drinking and growing things?

India is having issues with a late monsoon and dry wells. Wells are drying up worldwide. Europe seems to have an excess of water at the moment.

So water, pure (enough) water in a well available for drinking and agriculture is where we are missing it.

Deluge runoff is where it is.

From what you say it sounds like this water, not being reinjected, is being released into the atmosphere.

Now if they could purify the water and out it back into the aquifers that would be something. But they cant because the aquifer tends to compress once depleted and looses its ability to absorb water. Some warer gets back in, but the refill rates I see are all in the thousands of years.

[Tanada]

Tanada,

Yes it is water. But is that water available for drinking and growing things?

India is having issues with a late monsoon and dry wells. Wells are drying up worldwide. Europe seems to have an excess of water at the moment.

So water, pure (enough) water in a well available for drinking and agriculture is where we are missing it.

Deluge runoff is where it is.

From what you say it sounds like this water, not being reinjected, is being released into the atmosphere.

Now if they could purify the water and out it back into the aquifers that would be something. But they cant because the aquifer tends to compress once depleted and looses its ability to absorb water. Some water gets back in, but the refill rates I see are all in the thousands of years.

Right now almost all of that water from combustion is vented to the atmosphere where it eventually precipitates out. The place where I used to work switched out the fuel oil furnace to a natural gas furnace the spring before I started working there. The chimney was on an exterior wall and the following winter the cold bricks of the chimney did such a good job condensing the moisture out of the natural gas exhaust plume that the chimney filled with water right up to the level of the exhaust pipe connection at 6 feet up the interior wall. This caused condensed water to run back into the furnace and made us shut the thing down in February until repairs could be done. The furnace guy came out, looked down the chimney with a flashlight and then drilled a drain hole in the outside chimney about a foot up from the foundation. Water spouted out for about an hour before it was all drained. Then he fed a liner pipe down the chimney so that when the furnace was switched back on the exhaust went up a much narrower pipe inside the chimney which kept the water vapor a gas until it escaped out to the atmosphere. This all happened way back in 1995, but it made me curious about how much fossil water was released when fossil fuels are burned. Coal has the highest carbon to hydrogen ratio, close to 1:1, and thus produces the most CO2 to H2O. Petroleum is in the middle with a C:H ratio around 1:2 and Methane in natural gas has the lowest Carbon ratio of 1:4. Ultimately this means a cubic foot of powdered coal like that used in modern fluidized bed combustion releases about .25 cubic feet or 1.87 gallons of water, petroleum products average 1:1 or 7.48 gallons per cubic foot or 1 gallon per gallon burned. Worst (or best) of all Natural Gas produces 2:1 or 14.96 gallons per cubic foot of LNG burned.

In the past I have suggested that desert communities like Los Angeles could take advantage of this natural fact by placing condensers on the exhaust from their natural gas burning power plants to recover the water they are currently venting as vapor. So far as I know nobody has ever taken this suggestion with even the slightest seriousness. The condensed water contains some CO2 but far less than the water in a soda pop solution so baring other contaminants would be perfectly safe to use for irrigation or as grey water for toilet systems. One of the most bizarre things about modern society is the fact that we use clean potable water for flushing away our waste. Water that has been cleaned and decontaminated at great expense it deliberately recontaminated and sent to a sewage treatment plant. Such waste is insane if you think about it.

California consumed about 600,000,000,000 cubic feet of Natural Gas in 2020. Call it 584 to make the math east and that is 1 Billion cubic feet of LNG which produced 2 Billion cubic feet of water in 2020. To make that into easier to use numbers divide by 43,582 and you get 45,890 acre feet of water. That is the water supply for a small city of 40,000+ American people for a year. Sure it won't end the "water crisis" but it is still a heck of a lot of water. Alternately in California across all crops the average consumption is 3 acre-feet per acre so you could irrigate 15,000 acres of prime crop land for a year with the condensed water. That is about 24 square miles of farmland which is nothing to make light of in our hungry old world. If you used it on the most energy dense crops like Potatoes instead of luxury crops like grapes your yield would feed a lot of people.

[Newfie]

Tanada,

According ti the USGS the USA used 83.4 million acre feet of irrigation water in 2018. Your 46 thousand acre feet is then about 0.05% of total irrigation usage.

I completely agree that we waste water at an astounding rate.

In our hunting cabin we installed a incinolet toilet because we don’t have a proper septic tank and because we don't have a well. Each use produces about a tablespoon of ash, which can be disposed of any way you like including pitching it out the window. It does use electricity.

On the boat we have 150 gallons of water which lasts the 2 of us a couple of months, or more.