BAN #379: Concrete data, Oz kebab

29 November 2021   Issue #379

November 29, 2021

[The planetary nebula M 2-9, winds from a dying star. Credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Legacy Archive / Judy Schmidt]

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Is it hot in here, or is it just anthropogenic global warming?

Climate change is real, y’all

When I wrote for Slate I covered climate change a lot, because it’s important (duh) and the audience for it was built in, given the political bent of the magazine. I learned a vast amount about sources and sinks of CO2, what the effects were, how we measure it, what the predictions are, how the models work… my knowledge increased incrementally every time I read more about it.

But I think one of the biggest jumps and biggest surprises I can remember is learning that cement production is a huge source of carbon dioxide emissions. This was some years ago, and at the time (IIRC) concrete was responsible for a staggering 5% of the total amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. That was over 1.5 billion tons of CO2 per year.

I ran across an article recently with an update: cement is now 8%. Wow. And estimates are that we put 40 billion tons of CO2 in the air per year, not 30 as I used before, so this means cement is responsible for over 3 billion tons of CO2 added per year. That alone is TEN TIMES the amount of CO2 released by volcanoes every year.

That was shocking to me. Cement is made in part by heating limestone, calcium carbonate, and this produces CO2. A lot of it.

I was thinking about all this again due to an article I saw about companies trying to figure out more carbon neutral replacements for cement; it’s an interesting read about the profits and pitfalls of it.

And it always brings back a memory… a few years ago I was in LA for four months working as head science writer on the first season of the Netflix show “Bill Nye Saves the World”. It was early in the process, and we had finalized our list of topics for the series, one of which was tackling climate change. A few of us were in one of the office rooms talking things over, and I walked over to the window to look outside, something I do when I’m thinking. I hadn’t noticed it before, but right across the street from our building was a cement factory.

I remember pointing this out to my colleagues, and saying that cement manufacturing was a big chunk of the carbon pollution emission, and everyone else was surprised by this, as much as I was when I learned it.

If someone asks me what the greatest threat to humanity is right now, I’d ask if they mean immediate threat or long term? A big proximate threat is the GOP, but long term it’s climate change, hands down (and the GOP is a big reason it’s still a threat, hence my reasoning).

A big piece of that is ignorance, literally what we don’t know. It’s hard to fight something when you don’t know what you’re fighting.

Well, now you know a little more.

Apropos of nothing

Not everything needs to be themed

But it wasn’t all weighty and deep. I don’t remember exactly where we were — we drove from town to town all over the east coast and several hundred kilometers west while I was there — but when I saw this I laughed out loud.

[A donner kebab place in Australia. Credit: Phil Plait]

I told my guides I think we should maybe not eat there and give this a pass, and they had no clue what I was talking about. It took a while to explain.

Blog Jam

What I’ve recently written on the blog, ICYMI

[Will Andromeda collide with the Milky Way or not? New dara makes the future less clear. From Wednesday’s article. Credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), T. Hallas, and A. Mellinger ]

Et alia

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