I've been using this approach myself, albeit manually, with ChatGPT. I first ask my question, then open a new chat and ask it to find flaws with the previous answer. Quite often, it does improve the end result.
I had a similar realization a few weeks back while trying to purchase a new electricity contract. In the EU, this is made even worse by the definition of green electricity which includes biomass but excludes nuclear energy. For those curious, I wrote up what I found here: https://integralreview.com/green-electricity/
> In the EU, this is made even worse by the definition of green electricity which [...] excludes nuclear energy
Are you sure about this? I've done a quick search for what is specifically included, but came out empty-handed. I was under the impression that France managed to get nuclear to be included.
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Edit: found something that seems to say it's included in the "list of technologies" aimed to achieving "net zero" emissions. Although it's not "green", it's "strategic".
> After much back and forth, nuclear power was finally included in the single list of 17 technologies proposed in November by the text’s rapporteur, German MEP Christian Ehler (European People’s Party – EPP).
In addition, all nuclear technologies were covered: existing and future ones, fission, fusion as well as the fuel cycle.
When I searched, none of the electricity providers included nuclear energy in their list. I tried doing some research and found this definition for the European Environment Agency: "Electricity produced from resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and low-impact hydro facilities is often referred to as 'green electricity'."
It's good to see as you point out that the situation is evolving. Strategic is better than nothing!
Drax is cutting down old-growth forests in Canada and shipping them to the UK to be burned for fuel. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-farce-of-burning-woo... This is compressing the release of hundreds of years of captured carbon into a lot less time, increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.
Well, my point was that carbon neutrality is only one variable of the equation.
But if you want to focus specifically on biomass, I would say: "it depends". You can't answer that question easily. For instance, would you say a biomass plant producing electricity from wood pellets imported from Brazil is carbon-neutral? I think it isn't. When you're looking at biomass, you can't just look at the plant, you need to focus on how its fuel is sourced, what impacts this sourcing activity has, etc.
In some countries, peat is considered biomass. It’s probably worse than coal in terms of per unit damage, but generally it’s burned in far lower quantities.
Yeah, I've had these discussions with some scientists who are _really_ into peat, and got down a rabbit hole looking at the various EU states and how they deal with their peatlands from a policy point of view.
That's not how it works with plants. If you or a cow can eat them, that means that they are already done capturing the carbon because that's what they are made out of.
They are done and we still got too much atmospheric CO2, now you burn them. Feel free to insist they captured it in the past hundred years but it’s really a distinction without a difference in this situation. You don’t get a free pass on the CO2 you are releasing now.
If you do not burn them, the plants will die and get composted into soil. Soil itself will decompose and release that carbon back into the atmosphere. In temperate climate, this happens in a decade or less.
The cycle keeps running with or without humans doing the emissions part.
So lets focus on the extra carbon that we dug out and inserted into the cycle.
If it takes 50-100 years to grow back, then the CO2 is still in the air during this time plus you reduce a lot of habitat and create deserts.
If all the energy we consume today for heating, cars, electricity etc would come from biomass/trees then a huge part of our forests would have to be cut down in just a few years time, before they have a chance to grow back.
Is the presence of alcohol or is it the way some people behave while drunk? Because that behavior could be illegal without being drunk also being illegal.
Put another way, people get arrested sitting quietly because they are drunk without any obvious outward signs of being drunk so it’s is hardly intimidating.
That’s because a drunk persons’s decision making is inherently impaired. They might be sitting quietly now. The vast majority of criminal violence (domestic or otherwise) occurs in conjunction with impaired faculties and alcohol is often the cause.
