Preindustrial Societies

Chapter 4

Vocab

sedentary- a lifestyle with lack of physical exercise

hominid- any member of the biological family Hominidae

Humans have gone from hunters and gatherers to modern industrialized humans in just a short period of time.

We went from having to forage for food and pick of the remains of other predator's kills. Also, the energy gained from foraging was oftentimes less than the energy it took to find the food. So, we moved on to other foods.

"Except from some maritime cultures, foraging societies could not attain population densities needed for functional and social diversification."

When population did start growing, however, foraging alone could no longer support everyone. So, cultivation and agriculture were more heavily relied on. Developments in plowing techniques emerged, and with that new crops, such as rice and wheat, were able to be harvested. The use of large animals to help harvest and plow progressed when populations grew. It began with cattle, and then moved to horses.

"One well-fed American horse preempted cultivation of food grains capable to sustain about six people- but it could work at a rate at least ten times higher than an average man, offering a substantial energy advantage."

When population grew even more, there was a need for something even more powerful than horses, and so internal combustion engines emerged.

As we moved along, wood was used for everything from making tools to heating homes. They also used wood to make charcoal.

From wood there came waterwheels and from waterwheels there came windmills. From windmills there came the use of copper and steel and iron for mechanical building.

Questions

The ultimate source of energy in a pre-Industrial society is the sun.

An example of innovation within pre-industrial societies is a windmill.

A disadvantage I find with the energy sources available to pre-industrial societies is what if a civilization is not near an area with a lot of water or wind? Then what do they do?

My Questions

What kind of energy worked best?

Why didn't pre-industrialized societies use animals even sooner?

If charcoal is so wasteful, why did they continue to use it?

Homework 3

diagram of acid rain

anthropogenic- effects, processes or materials are those that are derived from human activities

defoliation- To cause the leaves of (a plant, tree, or forest) to fall off, especially by the use of chemicals

mitigation- requires reducing the intensity of radiative forcing in order to reduce global warming

attenuate- the gradual loss of intensity of any kind of flux through a medium

Both readings talk about the rising concern of acid rain. Although one discussed it occurring in China and the other in the Adirondacks, they both have the same ideas. Sulfur (SO2) emissions are a huge contributor, and because of the many cars in China, the amount is rapidly increasing. There are high concentrations of SO2 in the air there, but steps have been taken to reduce it. For instance, there have been restrictions put on using coal in homes and the relocation of industries from urban areas to the countryside. "These measures have reduced air pollution and lessened health effects considerably, although there still is a long way to go."

Main Contributors

China- cars, heavily polluting industries

Adirondack region- "Natural acidity originating in the terrestrial ecosystem often complicates the assessment of acidic deposition effects on stream chemistry. Decay of plant material in the soil produces dissolved organic compound that is inherently acidic."

pH

China-pH-

"In China, national monitoring programs generally focus on urban air quality and precipitation pH."

"The considerable deposition of NH+4, with its potential to contribute to acidification, implies that pH alone is not a good indicator of acid rain."

Impacts of Acid Rain

Adirondack region- fish die, vegetation damaged, too acidic to support wildlife.

".. are not strongly influenced by deep soil flow paths tend to have h is BCS percentage is consistent with the finding that 31% of streams averaged for all surveys had a concentration of inorganic Al > 2.0 μmol L, the level above which is toxic to brook trout, a relatively acid tolerant fish species."

China- Severe forest damage

-"Forest decline has occurred in some areas of China because of the direct effects of SO2, extremely acidic mist or rain events, and other pollutants."

-defoliation of masson pines and high tree mortality. However, insect attacks also play into this, so it's hard to tell what exactly is from the acid rain.

-Aluminum concentrations above what is considered toxic for tree root.

Focus of the Research

China- Finding how to reduce the sulfur emissions

Adirondack region- How the acid rain effects streams.

What Has Been Done to Improve the Problem?

China- The population is growing, so more electricity is needed. New coal-fired plants will be built in the poorer areas of China.

-"The results strongly suggest that considerable reduction in the emission of sulfur is needed to avoid the harmful effects from acidification in the future."

flat emission reduction goal of 20% from 1995 to 2010

-"To find the best options, all important effects- natural environment, human health, and climate- must be considered."

-More studies need to be conducted.

Adirondack region-

Solutions

There really are no immediate solutions to this problem anywhere. What we need to do is cut back on sulfur emissions and help repair the wildlife and ecosystems we've destroyed.

My Questions

1. Is there even anything we can do to help repair those ecosystems?

2. It's great to say that China needs more monitoring of the "environmental situation," but is that going to happen? Are there currently any studies going on?

3. Why isn't there acid rain everywhere when sulfur emissions occur all over the world?

Peat

Peat is a resource that should not be used. There is very little energy that can be taken from it, and the negatives are outstanding. For instance, when peat catches fire (which happens frequently), the fires help speed up global warming. Wouldn't trying to prevent that be the goal of using an alternative fuel? It just makes no sense! What we should be doing is cut back on the massive amounts of fuel we use daily. But, based on the people in our society these days, that's highly unlikely -.-

Homework 2

Global warming is a very real issue that is getting increasingly closer every day. But what can we do to counteract it when we use so much of fossil fuels and we emit so much CO2? Well, according to this article, it's integrated gasification combined cycle, or IGCC.

Coal has always been a source of fuel, and it's the best and worse of its kind. It's cheap and easy to extract, but it also pollutes in large amounts. It's the cause of killer smog, acid rain, atmospheric carbon dioxide, mercury pollution, and acid mine drainage. Scientists say that the negatives far outweigh the positives and "coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of man-made CO2, accounting for one quarter to one third of the world's total."

Coal-generated power plants built in the 1960s now need to be replaced. However, they're not environmentally friendly, and just one plant will produce 6 million tons of CO2 a year. That's not even the half of it; If you look at things globally, it's even worse. China is increasing their coal usage dramatically, it's almost more than what the US uses. According to Roel Hammerschlag, coal is worse than oil, and CO2 emissions are much 10 times what they were in the preindustrial times. However, the scientists have an idea to capture the emissions as they come out, and be stored below the earth's surface, also called carbon capture and sequestration. Coal gasification creates an end product that cleans the synthesis gas, "removing impurities from the methane stream." This plant sells these synthesized products to other companies, however, they still produce a lot of CO2, making them no different than the coal plants.

"If coal is to have a future as a major fuel in the twenty-first century and beyond, this is what it might look like: smokestacks effectively turned upside down, shooting C02 into subterranean rock formations rather than up into the sky." Is this really good? Many say it is and that the CO2 is indeed staying put.

Another way of CO2 sequestration is called saline aquifers, or brine formations. They're found where you can find oil and gas reservoirs, where there are porous rocks. The brine formations are very salty, so they run a low risk of contaminating anything. Rough studies in the 1990s suggested that 50,000 billion tons of CO2 can be stored in these formations.

IGCC- generating carbon-free electricity from coal. There is a plant in Tampa and they are 15% more efficient than pulverized-coal plants. It can capture SO2, NOx, and mercury more because they remove them before they burn the coal.

Natural gas prices have gone up significantly, so many of these plants are getting repossessed by banks. The US isn't too fond of IGCC because the cost would make it harder to compete with China and India.

GE is contributing largely to the IGCC idea. They pledged to reduce their global warming emissions and they also built the turbines used in the Tampa plant. However, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission stated that "IGCC technology, while promising, is still expensive and requires more maturation." They also said that it might raise electricity rates and they just want to protect consumers. However, consumer-protection and environmental groups have appealed this.

In Minnesota, however, they are going to build an IGCC plant and hopefully have it operating by 2011. Micheletti of that plant says that it will cost more upfront to build this plant, but if you look at it from the life-cycle cost side, it's the best bet.

Some also think that the technology will be "finicky and less reliable." However, the Tampa IGCC plant was the most reliable coal-fired plant in 2004.

Words I didn't know

Brobdingnagian- adjective describing anything of colossal size

Hangar- a closed structure to hold aircraft and/or spacecraft in protective storage

Questions

Global warming is an issue that's doesn't have just one solution, it's going to take time to stop. However, IGCC is definitely something that might slow it down. Our society relies on fossil fuels far too heavily, and as a result, we're destroying our planet. Putting the CO2 into the ground honestly scares me. What is it going to do to the land area around it? What if it somehow leaks into water supplies? Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe it'll work.The technology for this is undoubtedly amazing though. So, why not try it?

Homework Numero Uno

The Marcellus Shale formation in eastern United States contains large amounts of natural gas. To drill and obtain this gas, large amounts of water "to drill and hydraulically fracture the rock." This shale stretches from New York to West Virginia, gaining thickness as it goes from west to east. The thickest part is made up of sandstone, siltstone, and shale, while the thin western part is finer-grained, organic-rich black shale. Since this shale has been being heated and compressed since the Devonian Age, the organic matter has formed hydrocarbons, and within the pore spaces, mineral grains are absorbed within the shale. A technique called "hydrofrac" is used to get larger quantities of the natural from the rock. This is when water under high pressure is used to form fractures in the rock, which causes pathways for the gas to move to the well. The US Dept. of Energy funded the Eastern Gas Shales Project in the 70s and 80s, which focused on advancing the commercial aspect of Devonian Shale gas. However, this yielded uneven results, so they concluded "stimulation alone was generally insufficient to achieve commercial shale gas production." Later on in the 1980s, the Institute of Gas Technology discovered that the "gas-in-place" value of the Marcellus Shale was significantly higher than originally expected. In 2008, two professors found that about 50 TCF of recoverable natural gas could be taken from the shale. Later in 2008, it was raised to 363 TCF. The United States uses only about 23 TCF of natural gas a year, so if consumption stays as it is now, that can last us about 15 years. The sudden interest in the Marcellus Shale is due to the rising cost of wellheads and the new technology of drilling, which makes it easier. One of the downsides to this idea is the amount of water needed for it to work. Some of the concerns are using water, but not impacting the surrounding towns' water supply, destroying roads with the heavy equipment, and finding proper ways to get rid of "potentially contaminated" fluids. In all, the potential drilling of the Marcellus Shale is still under debate. While natural gas is the cleanest burning energy source, the impact on the people around the shale just might be too much.

wellhead- general term used to describe the pressure containing component at the surface of an oil well that provides the interface for drilling and production equipment.

1. The single most important problem that supports the opposition to drilling is the water issue. A large amount of it is required if we are to get resources from this shale. One of the concerns is where this water will come from and not contaminating local water supply. Also, another concern is what they will do with it once it's contaminated. An idea for this came from Texas, where they leave it out to evaporate and then dispose of the solid. However, that probably won't work in the humid climate the Marcellus Shale is in.
2. I read through all of the sources, and they all seemed to come from reliable places. The data was all collected over a span of several months, so that gave the author adequate time to find good sources. Also, the article was edited and it was published, so the sources should be reliable.
3. Figure 7 is slightly odd because gel like that is not mentioned in the text at all, so it seems (at least to me) a little random. Also, it's a bit odd as well because you wouldn't think goopy gel would carry proppants well.
My questions
1. Why don't we try harder to find a different solution to the need for natural resources? Or, better yet, why don't we try to wean off them?
2. What would happen to the water supply around the drill sites if they did happen to get contaminated? What sort of consequences would it bring?
3. If they did use the evaporation of the contaminated fluids, where would they discard of the sediment? Will it cause any issues?