E.P. Isaacs's Blog

Sorry that this post has been such a long time in coming. Over the past several weeks, I have been working almost solely on Chapter Two of The Clockwork Puppets. It’s not where I want it to be, but I […]

The newest installments of Postage Stamps and Airship Lollipop are up at the website. This week sees the sixth installment of the Little Red Riding Lamb section of the “1,001 Bedtime Stories” series. In this installment, Little Red discusses … […]

Brought hot off the presses and meant just for you by Beak Franklin. The Print-Werks Art Display System Looking for a way to add more art to your Second Life? We don’t think you’ll find better than the Print-Werks Art […]

Another week is about to draw to a close. As it does, Werks from the Iron Road has hit a couple milestones. I have, too. On Wednesday, I had my first interview for Nika’s books. Nika’s been interviewed before. Me? […]

Dear friends, Nika and E.P. here. Surviving in first and Second Life as best we can. We hope you may be able to say at least as much. First, and most important, Nika and I will be speaking in Second […]

Happy Tuesday, one and all. Last night, the intrepid beta-testers for the Airships, Steam, and Wire Springs Roleplaying Game (ASAWS) had their twelfth gaming session thus far. The campaign has seen our heroes survive the bombing of the World’s Fair, […]

After working on the new comic and an interactive novel in Twine (an interactive fiction creation tool) over the past few weeks, I have finally gotten an updated website up. Over the next week, I hope to get a web […]

Today, I sent out the emails I wrote about yesterday. Over the next week, I hope to read up on the debate over carbon capture efforts. As I do, I hope to write questions that will lead me to answers and to other experts in this debate (and further questions). As such, I will slow down the blog posts to once a week (or less – it truly depends on how quickly people respond)

We’ll see.

Until next week, stay comfortable in our ever-warming planet, dear readers.

The post Thoughts On … #1: Fighting Climate Change, Part Five appeared first on Werks From The Iron Road.

So, the takeaways from the past three blog posts are (among other things) –

The only way to have a chance at reversing climate change (and the damage it will do to all of us) is to remove more greenhouse gases from the environment year-over-year than what mankind (and the Earth itself) release into the atmosphere.The amount of carbon dioxide released in the past year weighed approximately sixty billion tons.For the purpose of this thought exercise, I am going to presuppose that we as a planet hold emissions year over year to that sixty billion ton level. This is problematic, as data points to a steady rise in emissions year-over-year. Still, sixty billion gives me a number to work with – and is the most recent yearly emission levels available.

Carbon capture technology exists in many forms. Chemists have toyed with synthetic petroleum since at least the 1920s. One company that I know of in the synthetic petroleum business is Changing World Technologies (CWT). Though CWT is not the only company in the world that has developed a process to turn plastics and other carbon-based waste into oil, they are (for a number of reasons) the company in this line of work that I know the most about.

CWT’s oil production process uses heat and pressure to convert anything from yard clippings to animal waste to discarded plastic into oil. And the process does this in a matter of hours. As CO2 is carbon-based, can a process be devised (if one does not already exist) to combine CO2 and discarded plastic to create petroleum (science leads me to believe the answer is yes) using a process similar to the one Changing World Technologies uses? Such a process would help to address rising CO2 emissions by locking carbon from CO2 back into a liquid form. It would help reduce plastic waste by recycling spent plastic back into petroleum. And this petroleum could then be pumped back into the ground to keep it out of circulation. If the amount of carbon from the CO2 and other greenhouse gases is greater than the amount of carbon emissions in a given year, our planet’s climate might (over a long period of time) reset itself to more life-friendly levels.

Simple logic so far.

Today, I will write an email to CWT and to Howard Herzog. I will ask CWT’s media relations department about the energy use of CWT’s machines compared to petroleum output (among other questions). I will also try to start a dialog with Mr. Herzog that, among other things, will hopefully lead me to individuals around the world working on carbon capture technology. Starting tomorrow, I hope to broaden this thought experiment to include plastics.

The post Thoughts On … #1: Fighting Climate Change, Part Four appeared first on Werks From The Iron Road.

To understand how to reverse global warming, it is necessary to know how much excess carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere every year. According to two recent articles, there seems to have been an increase of 3 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere over the year 2018 – 2019. In an article from Slate (published in 2014), 2 ppm of carbon dioxide weighs 40 billion tons. Therefore, in the year 2018-2019, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would appear to have grown by 60 billion tons.

It should be self-evident that, if one accepts the concept of climate change (and the science behind it), in order to reverse climate change, human beings must curb the growth in yearly CO2 emissions. If more CO2 is added to the environment every year than what is removed (through carbon capture), how can climate change be reversed? For this particular thought exercise, I am going to assume that the world somehow manages to hold yearly CO2 emissions to a steady rate of 60 billion tons.

With this amount of CO2 established, tomorrow (actually, this evening), I hope to lay the groundwork for what removing 60 billion tons (and 1 pound) of CO2 from the atmosphere every year could actually look like.

The post Thoughts On … #1: Fighting Climate Change, Part Three appeared first on Werks From The Iron Road.