Warmists actually sit around and think about this stuff, debate it, investigate it (with taxpayer money, because almost no one else will fund it), and write about it
THE WATER IN YOUR TOILET COULD FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE ONE DAY
DAY AFTER DAY, you pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, whether you’re driving or turning on lights or eating meat. You can’t help it, because, really, no human can. But I bet you haven’t stopped to think about how the simple act of pooping is also part of the problem: Worldwide, wastewater treatment facilities account for 3 percent of electricity consumption and contribute 1.6 percent of emissions.
A drop in the horrifying bucket that is climate change, you might say. But researchers are beginning to explore how we might tweak wastewater treatment technology to capture CO2 instead of emitting it, as a way to slow the ravages of climate change. If their plan works out, at least our poop can be guilt-free.
Currently, the stuff you flush in the toilet or send down the drain ends up in a facility, along with liquid waste from industries like beer or wine making. All that organic matter sits in open-air tanks where microbes feed on it. They munch on the waste and release CO2 as a byproduct, and the facility then pumps the relatively clean (but far from drinkable) water out to sea.
On its own, a person’s poop is carbon neutral (save for emissions from growing and transporting food): Plants capture carbon from the air by way of photosynthesis, you eat the plants, you produce the carbon as waste. When those microbes eat that waste and release the CO2 back to the atmosphere, it ends up right where it started.
Except that the wastewater treatment facilities need energy to operate. There might be a way to tweak this process, however. Some microbes, like bacteria and microalgae, feed on CO2 itself. “They would eat up the organic carbon and then convert the CO2 into chemicals, for example ethanol,†says Princeton University environmental engineer Zhiyong Jason Ren, who co-authored a recent Nature review of potential carbon capture techniques in wastewater treatment. So one potential fix would be to replace the typical microbes used in wastewater treatment with these CO2-guzzlers. “You treat wastewater but also you reduce CO2into something more valuable.â€
Valuable like????? The only thing mentioned is ethanol. Better yet, you could just stop pooping.
This focus on a new marketable product is intentional, to circumvent the biggest hurdle to carbon capture in all its forms: It’s just not profitable. A corporation has no incentive to, say, plant forests or install a carbon-sucking device on its premises if doing so only hurts its finances. Making carbon capture technologies take off will either require legislation to mandate them, a new business opportunity, or both.
Funny how government force always comes into play. And this article continues to go on and on, ending with
Let’s leave it at this: It wouldn’t be the worst thing if our poop helped scrub the atmosphere. It might even be just the place to start.
The treatment of Sewage is by the same processes that occur in the forests, ponds, and lakes; microbes digesting the dead organic waste. One of the problems of sewage is it contains chemicals of all kinds. Pharmaceuticals, soaps and additives, makeup, birth control estrogen, business chemicals and sometimes road and land runoff chemicals. Rendering the sewage sludge unusable for compost or fertilizer of human crops. Did any body run the chemistry to see if Sewage has the necessary components to convert to ethanol? Don’t remember enough chemistry to do it myself. However the commercial production of ethanol uses corn, wheat, rice, grapes, fruits, all high in starches and sugars. That production creates CO2 as a by-product.
PS Humans are not creating CO2 but are just unlocking the CO2 from its solid, liquid, or gaseous forms already found in Nature.
Let’s just go back to the good old days of dysentary, diarrhea, cholera and all the other waterborne diseases caused by consuming untreated water. Look at all the electricity we’ll save.
These people are f%cking idiots.
So what they should ask people to eat is a diet of food that is mostly absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract and not require a person to defecate. It would also not build up gas in the body. This diet hiisgh in protein but low in fiber, so there is little to no poop or gas created.
This is the perfect global warming alarmist diet. This diet should consist mostly of lean steak, eggs, nuts, clear meat broths, a few low-starch vegetables, coffee, tea, pickles…
Pretty much the opposite diet of what leftists tells us is good for the planet. They want us to live on grains, legumes, yams, and fruit. They want to turn us into playdough machines of sh!t and gas to save the planet. Or something. They’re full of sh!t.
The “developing world” is way ahead of us on this one. No treatment plants anywhere. it’s as if they knew how harmful they were.
Teach is just being silly again. The right seems consumed with poop and fart jokes, the way Maddow loves tRump dick jokes.
The article did not suggest “not pooping” but DID suggest we use water treatment facilities to reduce CO2 production to offset the CO2 generated by THE ELECTRICITY NEEDED TO RUN the facilities. Sigh.
They even proposed shunting fossil-fueled power plant CO2 pollution into the waste water facilities to capture the CO2 by having microbes convert it to less volatile organic compounds, perhaps to sell.