TreeHugger Asks: What "Dumb" Questions Do You Have About the Environment?

How come hardly anyone talks about tankless water heaters?
Aren't they more efficient?

How come no one has put up giant air filter for a city to clean the air?

why don't housing architects design more energy-efficient homes in large subdivisions? When they cut down all those trees, they're basically building huge homes in a desert of dirt...and encouraging people to consume massive amounts of electricity for air conditioning, hot water heaters could be placed on roofs for free heating, lawn sprinkler water-waste multiplies in a shade-less environment, and suburban sprawl is promoted in such developments.

Also, why do people tend to destroy an existing structure (when purchasing land) rather than try to make use out of the existing materials/structure? It would be cheaper to re-use those bricks from that old chimney for the driveway than buy individual pavers from the local garden supply store, AND it'd give new life to an old (possibly hand-made) product!

Why do people say solar doesn't work on cloudy days? I can use my solar calculator in a dark room with no problem!

Why aren't more water tanks on roofs (to take advantage of solar heating)? I would think roof-space, especially in cities, is a tremendous opportunity for use (other than just shielding the building from the elements).

Not really my question 'cuz I heard it somewhere else:
Given that the water level in a glass of ice water will drop after the ice melts, why would melting polar ice caps cause the ocean levels to rise ?

Allow me to present the mother of all "dumb" questions.

As someone that's not incredibly familiar with the science of global warming, but just a concerned citizen trying to inform himself, just how bad/real is the global climate change issue?

It's hard for a thoughtful person to trust anyone when everyone on the left argues that there is a scientific consensus on the issue and everyone on the right claims the exact opposite!

How do we sift through all the politics and bias to uncover the truth?

Lastly, can anyone suggest a good book to read to help me begin to understand global climate change?

For A:

When ice is in a glass of water and then the ice melts, the water level stays the same because the ice displaces the same amount of water. The concern about ice caps melting is about the ice that is on land- that ice is not displacing anything, so when it melts all that extra water goes to the sea!

Okay, not terribly scientific, but I hope that explains it. Someone please feel free to expand if I botched something..

There's much talk about the oceans rising, but what of lakes? Rivers? The Great Lakes? Will, say, Michigan or Colorado be under water? Does this all relate to being at or below sea-level?

What resources are there available on low-energy living that would appeal to non-trendy green-oriented people? There are probably a lot of Republicans out there who would be all for a low-energy lifestyle if it involved homespun rather than black turtlenecks.

Not all people respond to a Jetsons lifestyle. Some want Little House on the Prairie.

how does hydrogen fuel technology work? what the heck is a "fuel cell"? is it still a combustion process?

To dwightstreetrenter:
The development of suburbs is all about money. The cheaper the developer can build the biggest homes, the better. Architects aren't usually heavily involved, but the key element is that consumers continue to purchase these homes...
Regarding re-using existing buildings, again, all about money. It is actually almost always cheaper to tear down an old building and throw it into one garbage dump than to try to renovate it or to separate discards to re-use...
Sad but true.

Basically, fuel cell technology allows one to harvest electricity from a gas source, typically hydrogen. Hydrogen gas is pumped through multi-layered ceramic tubes. The layers of the tubes filter the hydrogen and essentially scrape off the electrons from the hydrogen atoms. The electron-less hydrogen is expelled and quickly forms with oxygen atoms in the air. Thus, pure H2O is the byproduct. This is not a combustion process. It actually is pretty amazing that it requires no real mechanical processes other than a little bit of pumping.

The electricity created could be used to power your house, a vehicle, a computer, or any other electric device.

Fuel cell technology is attractive, because the process to create electricity creates no harmful waste. The problem is that we do not have a readily available source of hydrogen. Typically, hydrogen is captured in the natural gas (fossil fuel) refining process.

Not a scientist here, but I did tour an amazing Siemens prototype fuel cell facility in PA while in school. Please feel free to correct or add to my response.

Jimmybund:

There are many reasons why global warming is a serious matter. For instance people worry a lot about rising sea levels for good reason. 50% of the worlds population live on coastlines all around the globe. If those places flood, that would leave more than 3 billion people homeless and the loss of land would increase environmental damage dramatically on the surviving land. Warmer weather means bigger storms, and more habitat for disease spreading insects. Many scientists suspect that the melting of glaciers will change the path of the great ocean conveyor that could even trigger an ice age! Our oceans are just one example. We also take our resources for granted and unfortunately countries like the U.S. all too often miss how that can put holes in a balanced ecosystem. Often times too, people forget in our modernized world that we depend on nature and that we are just another organism in the biotic community, and just like everyone else in that community we need a healthy habitat to survive. Everything affects everything else. That is the most important thing, is people need to start thinking about where everything they use comes from, how its made, and where it will go when they are finished, because EVERYTHING affects our climate. Some people might not think using a cell phone affects it, but when they think about the electricity needed to make,charge, and recycle it when they are done it becomes clearer. I have briefly touched base on this huge topic, but I hope now its a little bit clearer what the fuss is all about.

Some good readings:
Boundaries, a Casebook in Environmental Ethics
The Environmental Ethics and Policy Book
Silent Spring (Classic!)
I also feel that "An Inconvenient Truth" is a good summary of what is going on, even though its got politics!

Which trees are best at absorbing CO2 (on a species by species by basis?) How will a return to local agriculture affect existing tree cover?

Wobbly, a fuel cell is a fairly simple device in concept. It can be as big as a bus or as small as half a breadbox.

You pump some sort of fuel in one side, and some sort of oxidant in the other, and electricity is generated from a pair of wires coming out of the top. The combined fuel and oxidant come out a vent as exhaust. You can then use the electricity to run stuff like electric motors.

This is really similar to what a woodstove does (fuel=wood and oxidant=air) but instead of producing HEAT it produces mostly ELECTRICITY (and a relatively small amount of heat - fuel cells do run hot).

The fuel does not have to be hydrogen and the oxidant does not have to be oxygen pulled from the air. Fuel cells used in laptops run on methanol (wood alcohol), and systems used in homes run on methane (natural gas).

If you do use hydrogen and air, though, your exhaust will be H2O - usually in the form of steam or water vapor - which is a very environmentally friendly compound. ;^)

Unfortunately, the fuels used in fuel cells (and this is particularly true of hydrogen) do not naturally occur in sufficient quantities to displace any other source of energy. Therefore, energy must be expended to create these fuels (for example, to crack hydrogen out of water) and the energy that will be released when the fuel is later fed to a fuel cell is ALWAYS less than the energy required to create the fuel. (Too bad - otherwise, you'd have a perpetual motion machine!)

So the most important thing to remember about a fuel cell is that it is NOT an engine, and it is NOT equivalent to any generator that runs on naturally occurring fuel. In fact, it most strongly resembles a storage battery, such as your typical rechargeable lead-acid battery. You give it energy when you create the fuel, you get some smaller portion of the energy back when you run that fuel through the fuel cell.

The idea of a "hydrogen economy" and hydrogen fuel cells in cars is extremely attractive to the entrenched automobile, oil, and grid power industries, which is why US manufacturers have tried so hard to divert resources from electric and hybrid car technology by promising us hydrogen fuel cells cars "any day now". The harsh realities of hydrogen production, storage and distribution combined with its' poor energy density (as compared to gasoline, for example) make it impossible for all of the hydrogen required for the "hydrogen economy" to be generated using clean environmentally friendly technologies at this time. Instead, we would just be increasing the amount of coal and petrochemicals being burned to make up for the efficiency losses inherent in the fuel conversion and distribution steps, and increasing our need for electricity in the bargain, while requiring the replacement of all existing vehicles.

Admittedly, replacing millions of small poison-belching exhaust pipes with far fewer, easier to scrub gigantic power plant chimneys would be nice. And there's always the dream of solar, tidal and hydro generated electricity displacing coal and oil. But in reality (for cars at least) the newer battery technologies promise a cleaner, more environmentally friendly path forward.

I hope I answered your question without delving too far into thermodynamics and politics. If you want more, the website http://planetforlife.com/h2 goes deeper into the science, and does a reasonably good job of explaining why the hydrogen fuel cell is mostly just an interesting gadget, with perhaps some niche uses for reducing pollution, that simply can't fulfill the glowing promises made by Washington and Detroit.

Being an architect, I can answer a few...

Generally salvaging existing materials is (for now) more expensive than new ones (labor cost). Buying recycled is one way to offset that. Many clients are un-sympathetic to the larger picture of the environment when it's time to calculate the project cost. Clients drive design in what they want and as architects, we try to give them the best solution. If they want traditional in suburbia, we can't give them a box with a tank on the roof. In CA, the engineering required for that is expensive due to earthquakes. Architects have to be informed of current technologies so we can educate and direct our clients to make the best decisions possible (that's our job). As to urban sprawl - we cannot dictate social trends, just try to minimize the damage it's causing.

Why aren't methane digesters more commonly used?

Lightning's got lots of electricity in it, right? I once heard a bolt of lightning has 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.

IS THERE ANY WAY TO HARNESS (AND POSSIBLY STORE) THE ENERGY FROM LIGHTNING?

Seems like it'd be a great solution for powering high-rise buildings whose towers get struck all the time. And if Doc Brown was scientifically accurate (?), 1.21 gigawatts per bolt of lightning is a lot more than the mere megawatts that wind farms aspire to produce.

The more weight you have to move the more gas you burn... I use transit to go to work and only use my car (a hybrid) about once our twice a week on short distance (shopping or going to the movies).

I don't fill up that often, but trying to get even better mileage, I am better off never filling up my tank more than a half (or a third even), so my car weight less ? Or is the gain in efficiency not worth it ?

If we stop eating meat and drinking milk to save the environment what happens to all those domesticated species that have few purposes other than to be meat? Do we release the cows and chickens into the wild?

What are the conservatives conserving?

Bovis- the idea behind environmental vegetarianism/veganism is not to convince everyone to stop eating meat. That is an unreasonable goal. However, if more people ate meat in moderation, or some people stopped eating meat to offset the overconsumption of other people, then we could theoretically cut back on the environmental damage of maintaining large numbers of cows and chickens. They will never be "wild" again, nor will cats or dogs. But a family farm of cows is preferable to a gigantic commercial farm of cows.

People have been eating meat for as long as we know humans have been around, but it wasn't until the industrial revolution that meat consumption increased dramatically. We don't need to be eating/wasting as much meat as people currently do! Be moderate!

Bovis,

There are other justifications for vegetarianism besides the animal-rights perspective. To feed a cow, you need to raise corn and other foodstuffs, and a pound of marketable meat takes up to 10 pounds of edible corn. Throughout history, and today in most of the world, meat is not a part of the daily diet because it's just too costly. And if we ended adult meat consumption, we would have more than enough grain (and milk and cheese and eggs) to feed everyone in the world.

Persons over 25 don't need much animal protein, although growing people do. In fact, over-consumption of protein has been linked to an increased likelihood of cancers, because protein stimulates cell growth, and in grown-ups cell growth is normally a slower process than in young people. Of course, there is also cholesterol and obesity to consider.

As for the fate of farm animals, no one eating them for lunch seems to worry about this. If we stopped eating cows and chickens today, we'd still have milk and eggs, and we'd need to raise far fewer livestock in the future.

Where can I find a visual representation of global coastline changes for different rises in sea level?

Bee:
Many "old school" conservatives actually care about preserving the natural environment. Neocons appear to be only conserving their own wealth.

When there were far fewer people on planet Earth, we could pretty much live the way we wanted and the planet (mostly) took the hit. Now there are clearly too many people on the planet, the planet is suffering because of it, and controlling the population is an obvious and important thing for many countries to do.
Why is this topic never discussed to the level it should be and; why has support for birth control and family planning ceased to exist from the U.S. government in the U.S. and overseas and; why has Europe not picked up the slack on this issue?

How do I start to caculate method of lowest impact?

For example, will getting my DVDs in the mail be relatively eco-friendly since the posties have an existing infrastructure?

When one load of my laundry really needs some kind of heat to disinfect (say sheets and towels) which has less of an impact one hot water load in the wash or running the dryer?

So that's it, thinking about impact and how to determine what the best way to go about it. Oh, and forcing corporations to do the same.

I understand that nuclear power is heavily criticized by many, especially by environmentalists. At the same time, many of these say (myself included) it´s an important part of the energy mixture in the short/medium term as to help reduce CO2 emission, which currently could be described as the most urgent goal. Why not use huge nuclear powerplants to generate hydrogen via electrolysis from water? And then have this hydrogen shipped, just like natural compressed gas or equivalent in big ships? If there happens to be an isolated island somewhere, perhaps having it there would reduce human safety concerns in case that´s an issue (more energy needed for transportation though).

Pepsi and Coke say their bottled tap water is "purified." What do they mean by that?

over the past few years i've become a lot more environmentally aware. I look at many different web sites to get ideas on how to gradually become carbon neutral and i make attempts to convince my friends to do the same. however, through all this, there are some phrases that i see constantly and still have no idea what they are.

What are energy certificates, wind certificates, and green tags and how do they help our environment?

My question is regarding the Toyota Prius. On Treehugger.com many people talk about how great the Prius is for our environment in compared to other vehicles, but I have read an article titled ‘Prius Out does Hummer in Environmental Damage’ in The Recorder, on March 7, 2007, by Chris Demorro. In it it states that the mining, refining, and shipping of its nickel batteries causes more environmental damage then a Hummer. (I can forward, anyone interested , a copy of the article but I no longer have the link.) So if this is the case ARE Prius’s really a viable option?

Amanda,

Pepsi and Coke both sell bottled water under the brand names Aquafina and Dasani. Both of these waters are purified through a process called reverse osmosis, a process where water is demineralized using a semipermeable membrane at high pressure.

The advantages of bottling reverse osmosis water are twofold. Any type of water can be used (municipal tap water is used by Coke and Pepsi) so water isn't being transported twice, once from the spring to the bottling facility, and once from the bottling facility to the retailer. Another advantage is that one doesn't have to worry about possible contaminants from the source of the spring water that is bottled by other companies, because reverse osmosis water is 100% pure.

That said, I'm a proud tap water drinker, out of a refillable bottle, of course. I believe that the exhaust caused by transport trucks shipping all the bottled water around will kill me before the impurities in my municipal tap water gets a chance.

What is better - hand towels or hand dryers in toilets and are there bio-degradable/recyclable hand towels?

Hi,
I work for ActionAid in the UK and we are trying to work out our carbon footprint. I have worked out how much paper we use but I don't know how to work out how much carbon was emitted in the production of the paper. anybody got any ideas on how I can work this out?

Thanks
Catherine

Hi,

when storing CO2 in the ground, is there a chance we ran out of O2 to breathe ?

I'm pretty far down the list.. probably won't get seen, but here goes:

I live in Canada's grain belt. I often hear people say urban sprawl is bad because it displaces farm land. I know urban spaces are a problem for so many other reasons, but isn't modern farm land similarly bad, or even less green than city space?

Has anyone done any comparisons between city space and crop land? Carbon, wildlife, etc.? I would love to see some analysis of the two ecosystems for a given population size. Just going by estimates, I would assume it's the cars which tip the scales, not the "loss" of green space.

Links woud be appreciated!
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(full disclosure: I am from the farm, now in city)