How thoroughly should I rinse foam filters?

[FishHobby99]

To see how rapidly these things can evolve to survive, just look at the mutations already occurring with the corona virus. All life forms have a strong "will" to survive and do whatever they do.

I'm not sure I will worry much about what is in my drinking water. Even aside from my cancer that could suddenly decide to finish me off within a few months, the effects of climate change we are now seeing and that will continue will finish us off well before the end of this century.

 

[FishHobby99]

I hope you are overly negative on your climate change outlook.

I hope & pray the cancer goes into remission. You’re greatly beloved at TFF, even us newbies respect & admire you. Stay for many years, our friend.

 

[Colin_T]

I hope you are overly negative on your climate change outlook.

I would like to say he is overly negative but I don't think he is. My theory shows everything on Earth as being dead in 50 years.

There has been a sudden rise in CO2 (carbon dioxide) levels in the past 20 years and in particular during the last 5 years.

There has also been a fairly steep rise in Methane and other greenhouse gasses over the last 20 years.

The Earth's average temperature has increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius in the last 20 years, and there has been a sudden spike in temperature during the last 5 years.

The ice caps and glaciers are all melting at an alarming rate. Some glaciers have gone completely. The more ice that melts, the less there is to cool the planet and the faster the remaining ice melts. Think of a glass of ice water out in the sun. The ice blocks represent the glaciers and polar caps (Arctic and Antarctica). The water stays nice and cold for a while but slowly the ice blocks melt. As the ice blocks melt, the water starts to slowly warm up. As the water warms, the remaining ice melts faster. Eventually most or all of the ice melts and the water in the glass suddenly starts to warm up rapidly. This is where we are now, most of the ice has melted and the planet is starting to warm up.

Over 95% of trees and forests have been cleared and or burnt during the last 200 years. There literally isn't enough trees left to take the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere, and everything that gets burnt releases more CO2 into the atmosphere. The trees used to shade the earth and help keep it cooler, as well as reflecting some of the heat back out into space.

There is less shade now and the ground is heating up. Roads and buildings absorb and trap heat and radiate it out at night. And there are a lot of roads around the world (trillions of kilometers of black bitumen absorbing heat, all day, every day).

The trees and forests have been replaced with roads, cars and houses/ buildings. These all produce huge amounts of heat and greenhouse gasses. Motor vehicles produce heat from their engines, exhaust, radiators, air-conditioners, tyres rolling on the road, and braking. Most vehicles are parked in the sun where they heat up more (metal and glass box in the sun gets hot inside). Multiply that by 4 billion+ vehicles running all over the world, all day, every day. That's a huge amount of heat produced by vehicles. And the exhaust gasses produced by these vehicles adds to the greenhouse blanket that is trapping and holding heat around the Earth.

Houses and buildings produce vast amounts of heat due to their electrical appliances. Power stations burn things and make heat to produce power. The power travels down the high tension power lines at thousands of volts. It comes into our homes and gets reduced by step down transformers, which get really hot because they have to reduce the kilovolts to 220/240 volts. Then there are more step down transformers in electronic devices that reduce the 220/240 volts to 12 volts, which is what most electronic devices use for power. Again, more heat is produced here. This is why electronic devices get hot. Multiply billions of electronic devices running in billions of homes all around the world. That's a lot of heat being made to watch television, have lights on, and keep food refrigerated. Not to mention computers.

The CO2 in the atmosphere is dropping the KH and pH of the oceans. It is happening slowly but will increase as the KH buffers in the ocean get used up.

The phytoplankton (single celled algae) in the ocean is the only thing keeping CO2 levels down and keeping us alive, and they are struggling to do that. When the water temperature gets too high, and the pH of the ocean drops, the phytoplankton will die and there will be a sudden spike in CO2 levels and everything in the ocean will die. This will release more CO2 into the atmosphere and everything on Earth will die from CO2 poisoning.

Larger animals need more oxygen and will die from CO2 poisoning first. Animals that are close to the ground or live in low lying areas will die quickly because CO2 is a heavy gas and sinks to the ground. As more things on the planet die, more CO2 will be produced. The few remaining plants will also suffer from too much CO2 and they will die from heat and lack of oxygen.

The only things that will be left alive on this planet are the organisms living around volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean. These will probably survive because they don't need oxygen and the volcanic vents provide a stable environment for the organisms to survive in. Everything else on earth will be dead, and that includes humans. You have 5 years to change things otherwise the outcome for your species will be catastrophic.

 

[Oblio]

The power travels down the high tension power lines at thousands of volts. It comes into our homes and gets reduced by step down transformers, which get really hot because they have to reduce the kilovolts to 220/240 volts. Then there are more step down transformers in electronic devices that reduce the 220/240 volts to 12 volts, which is what most electronic devices use for power. Again, more heat is produced here.

While transformers or any other means of transferring, transmitting, or converting energy lose energy (as heat, light etc) they are not a large source of heat. Why do they get hot? Transformers get hot because of things like Eddy currents in the core which can be reduced by things such as laminations. Large power transformers are extremely efficient. At 95%+ efficiency they are one of the best energy transforming devices around. Their 'cost' in heat is many magnitudes smaller than the savings realized by transmitting power at high voltage. There is no heat generated directly due the change in voltage (or current). Small 'wall warts' get hot mainly due to the linear regulators which dissipate power at a rate of Current x (Unregulated Input Voltage - Regulated Output Voltage). Switching power supplies (there is one in your PC) are much more efficient, but are more expensive, larger, and can have noise problems if not properly designed.