You have to admit its ironic that some people were also saying OMG NO MOAR SEA ICE BY YEER 2013 GAIZ!! Now here we are in 2013 and that prediction never came to pass much like OMG TEH HIMALAYS WILL DISSAPEAR. The roles of the ocean are indeed complex, as you say, so I wonder how people like Al Gore consider the matter settled when clearly we don't know as much as we pretend. So the sea ice didn't disappear by 2013 as foretold and neither did the Himalayan glaciers disappear. Seems like quite a bit of fear mongering drives climate discussion. Well, that and money.
You are also forgetting glass and aluminum. There is a pretty large market for recycling metals, rubber, asphalt and glass. There is also a market for recycling oils too. The paper and plastic market is less but is still there but not as demanding as those. That is somewhat true for those but certainly not for metals and glass And manufacturing those materials from scrap isn't? For most materials, particularly metals and glass, the amount of energy and other resources is far less than the amount of manufacturing from raw materials. Also landfills are not without cost and as noted we are running out of space for convenient landfills near urban areas while landfills also have many pollution aspects. Here is an interesting study from Stanford published in 2012 comparing some of the costs for municipalities for recycling versus landfill and versus manufacturing from raw materials. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph240/micks2/ [rquoter] Recycling vs. Landfill Disposal One of the main alternatives to which recycling is compared is the disposal of the recyclable waste in landfills. Since no sorting or processing is required beyond transporting the waste to the landfill, it appears at first glance that landfill disposal is cheaper: it requires less money for human labor and less energy for work done by machines. It's for this reason that Mayor Michael Bloomberg put a moratorium on recycling programs in New York City in 2002, and the diversion of recyclables to landfills for those 18 months was estimated to save the city $57 million. [1] The cost of picking up and transporting recyclables can range from $20 to $70 per ton, depending on the length and difficulty of the recycling truck routes, and the budget also has to consider the energy cost of the fossil fuels burned to run these trucks, as well as labor and fuel costs to sort, process, and market the recycled material. [2] The average mix of recyclables collected by a homeowner are estimated to be worth about $125 per ton when the recycled materials are sold to manufacturers, so there is a possibility for recycling programs to make a net profit, but only if transportation, sorting, and processing costs are kept lower than this value per ton. [2] This is a requirement that some but not all current recycling programs may be able to meet. Cities fare better in terms of net profit and energy savings when people recycle more (so that there's more recyclable material per truck trip), when residents sort recyclables themselves (for free) rather than requiring the city to sort them, when the population is dense (more recyclables collected per mile in the collection truck), and when efficient sorting and/or processing technologies are in place. [1,3,4] Recycling vs. Manufacturing from Raw Materials The metric discussed above - revenue generated by selling recycled materials minus the costs of producing recycled materials - doesn't tell the whole story, since it doesn't account for the energy saved by manufacturing from recycled instead of virgin materials. A metric that attempts to account for all these factors, as well as other effects like new jobs in recycling and increased lifespans for landfills, is the GPI (Genuine Progress Index) developed by the GPI Atlantic research group. [5] According to the metric in the previous section, recycling programs cost Nova Scotia $18 million more per year than landfill disposal, but the GPI Atlantic report says that Nova Scotia saves $25 million - 125 million per year by recycling, depending on which additional factors are included. [5] Clearly the energy savings of manufacturing from recycled material rather than virgin material is worth consideration, and there are in fact energy savings for all the typical recyclable materials considered below, although more for some than others. [6] Aluminum offers the most savings, with cans from recycled material requiring as little as 4% of the energy required to make the same cans from bauxite ore. [6] Metals don't degrade as they're recycled in the same way plastics and paper do, fibers shortening every cycle, so many metals are prime candidates for recycling, especially considering their high value per ton compared to other recyclables. [6] Polystyrene from recycled material costs 88% less than without recycling, but a negligible amount of polystyrene is recycled in the United States because of the difficulty sorting it from other plastics. Infrared sorting can help, and soon more cities may be able to take advantage of these savings as the technology develops. [6] Other plastic products like polyethylene terephthalate soft drink bottles cost 76% less to manufacture form recycled materials, and this percentage as well as the variety of plastics that can be recycled is expected to increase with new separation technologies such as froth floatation and skin flotation. [3,6] Nonetheless, plastic degrades every time it's recycled, so some plastic will always need to come directly from fossil oils if such products are to continue to be produced. [6] Paper (in particular newspaper) and glass have lower energy savings than the previous materials, with recycled products costing 45% and 21% less energy respectively. Recycled paper has a large market in China, although work still needs to be done to facilitate mixed paper recycling as opposed to newspaper-only recycling. Glass, on the other hand, may not be worthwhile to recycle, since the energy saved is only about a fifth of the energy to produce glass from sand, and sand is not a resource that is running low. [1,6] For the materials considered here, greater energy savings corresponds to a higher monetary value per ton, creating an even greater incentive for cities to recycle at least aluminum and higher-grade plastics. [6] ... Conclusion With a well-designed program and the right technology, recycling can be more efficient in terms of energy, money, and natural resources when compared to a system that manufactures everything from virgin materials and sends it all to landfills when consumers discard it. Recycling is not always the cheapest alternative, however, especially when reuse is an option, as in the case of glass jars or drink containers. Reuse, recycling, and even landfills have materials for which they are the least wasteful disposal method, but as technology finds new ways to sort and recycle waste, the fraction of waste going to landfills can certainly decrease. [/rquoter]
If you see in the article I posted above for most products there is far less energy required to recycle than from scratch. The largest saving is in aluminum that requires only 4% of the energy to recycle as it does to refine from ore.
Commodore, sincere pro tip for annoying hippies (in case that's your aim): It is better for the planet to keep your average 1960's plymouth running than to buy a new Prius. The environmental costs of material extraction and manufacturing a new Prius outweighs the gas savings the hybrid has over an existing gas guzzler. (This point actually underlines rocketsjudoka's about the great good of recycling materials instead of minting something from scratch, but I thought it might help you be super-accurate if you want to irritate a leftie. Cheers!)
This is true but things like that go under another great hippie dippie principle called reuse You also have to consider the lifetime energy investment. If you are only going to drive the Prius for a year and then scrap it clearly driving a 1960's Plymouth for that year is going to save you more energy. If you drive the Prius for years then after awhile the energy savings will tip in the Prius' favor and make up for the invested energy in manufacturing the Prius. This is a calculation in building we frequently look at regarding putting in energy efficient features. Since in most cases extremely energy efficient features, such as low-e windows, are more expensive than there conventional counterparts that initial costs has to be considered in construction. Depending on how long those features will remain in place that cost difference will be made up and then you will get a net savings from reduced energy costs.
...but um, yeah. Considering how many of the world's largest corporations are oil companies, I can totally see that climate change research would be a great money boon vs. denying climate change.
Same way the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease became conventional wisdom. Climate change, public health, and economics have many things in common. Thousands of confounding variables. Effects that can usually only be measured over long periods of time. Heavy reliance on observation rather than controlled experimentation. Trillions of dollars in government money at stake. All of this makes these areas prone to advocacy and bad science. The loudest and most alarmist get the money and fame. Al Gore is the classic case. The man has made hundreds of millions of dollars while providing nothing of value.
There's very little that economists are as certain about as climate scientists are about climate change. Nothing is ever 100%, but if you set any reasonable threshold of certainty as a basis for policy decisions, we've long since passed it with climate change.
Nigel kicking ass! <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MjruPuo1KgU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Yes, there are zero dollars to be made in the green trade. http://www.humanevents.com/2007/10/03/the-money-and-connections-behind-al-gores-carbon-crusade/
It would cost 50 times as much (quadrillions of dollars) to stop temperatures from rising as it would cost to just adapt to them. <iframe width="480" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Zw5Lda06iK0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
my god man, are you really comparing the trillions in the oil industry and some of the world's largest market capped companies, to non-for-profits offering advisory services for carbon trading? ^refer to above diagram
it wouldn't cost so much if people took the time to do basic research and understood why things like recycling are energy efficient, rather than trawling out flawed and debunked Youtube videos.
Al Gore is not a scientist, he is a politician. The only scientists getting millions of dollars are the ones paid off by oil companies. As for making hundreds of millions of dollars and providing nothing of value, he just wants to join the long line of financial innovators, and somesuch. of course, I suppose awareness of energy efficiency is nothing, especially to someone who hasn't caught the message quite yet.
What is wrong with making money off of new practices and technology? Anyway as others have noted the amount of money in the green trade pales to the amount of money in the fossil fuel trade.
Well I am glad you are acknowledging that warming is happen. My own view as of late is that we have likely already passed the threshold when warming can be prevented and will have to adapt to a warmer world.
