Bush ok's Gulf of Mexico Drilling

[archman]

Yes, enough about global warming for the love of god. If the scientists can't agree with a comfortable majority on the topic (and we don't), it's not going to get anywhere here either. Visit the Bad Astronomy discussion boards for heated climate change arguments... they make the ones on scubaboard pale. Not that reading the ones around here are less tiring.

This thread was doing quite well with the cool info about ocean drilling tech and geology (albeit simplistic and exaggerative on the biology). Let's have more of that sweet action. I love this technical junk.

 

[Wildcard]

We obviously have an apparent stalemate on the issue of global warming.I previously posted a link to an article discussing CO2 absorption by the oceans and the measurable increase in acidity and the effect it has on calcium. The discussion of CO2 and causal acidic imbalance is measurable. Calcium in the form of shells, carapace, coral, etc. does not form in acidic solution. Again the link:1. ANNALS OF SCIENCE
THE DARKENING SEA
by ELIZABETH KOLBERT
What carbon emissions are doing to the ocean.
Issue of 2006-11-20
Key word for search isteropods
New Yorker magazine

She is nothing more than a staff writer for the new yorker.

Now for a related topic. Global warming and it's effects on Bikini sizes: Will they get smaller and eventualy become extinct? lets hope so!

 

[lamont]

Carbon Dioxide is a natural, abundant chemical that is essential to the growth of all plants and trees. You and every other member of the planet's six billion human population emits CO2 every time they exhale. Termites produce ten times the amount of C02 than all the fossil fuels burned in a year worldwide. The technology of energy production, transportation, etc., has been calculated to be only 0.04 per cent. The UN Kyoto Climate Control Treaty is intended to control that! Do you think 0.04 per cent has any effect? The notion of calling CO2 a "pollutant" is ludicrous. Worse, it is a criminal fraud.

O2 is also an entirely natural part of the environment but too much can kill you. H2O is an entirely natural part of the environment but too much can kill you. Similarly, CO2 is a natural part of the environment, but too much is bad for the entire planet. Take it all away and we freeze, increase the concentration too much and we're gonna cook.

Arguing about weither or not it is a pollutant is splitting hairs and is on par with arguing over the definition of what 'is' is.

The amount of CO2 emitted each year due to human activity is also estimated to be about 3-4% of the amount of CO2 emitted via natural sources (not 0.04 percent). That is enough that only about half of that is absorbed while the other half persists in the atmosphere. The magnitude of the emissions is also significant and around 1% of the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere per year and that amount is cumulative year over year. Nobody has ever suggested that we're dealing with large percentage effects. If we were, we'd be seeing much more rapid climate change and we wouldn't be having these wonderful arguments...

 

[Mafiaman]

The technology of energy production, transportation, etc., has been calculated to be only 0.04 per cent

You cherry picked my post a bit, but moving forward (and pulling out now for the drive south) I would be curious learn just how much CO2 we produce but can't avoid. Breathing, farting, heating our homes, chilling our beer.

How much do we produce that can't be avoided.

 

[Bill51]

Yes, enough about global warming for the love of god. If the scientists can't agree with a comfortable majority on the topic (and we don't), it's not going to get anywhere here either. Visit the Bad Astronomy discussion boards for heated climate change arguments... they make the ones on scubaboard pale. Not that reading the ones around here are less tiring.

This thread was doing quite well with the cool info about ocean drilling tech and geology (albeit simplistic and exaggerative on the biology). Let's have more of that sweet action. I love this technical junk.

Sound and vibration pollution is one product of drilling and producing that from my understanding doesn’t yet have the research done that I would like. We do have guidelines that appear to be pretty conservative, but are they too conservative or are we missing something? We tend to forget about deep-water coral and other deep structure that has become the semi-permanent home to plenty of creatures and how do we protect them? Once drilling is done, it doesn’t appear to be an issue up in the water column, but what about the bottom stuff. Another offshoot of that is what knowledge will science get from looking at the local bottom habitat immediately around the rig site? This is one of the few times we get to take a detailed look at a small area of Deep Ocean and monitor it over time.

 

[H2Andy]

Yes, enough about global warming for the love of god. If the scientists can't agree with a comfortable majority on the topic (and we don't)

so, there is no global warming?

scientists don't agree on that?

and it's not at least partially man-made?

scientists don't agree on that?

oy vey

:shakehead

 

[archman]

Eh, the corals are few and far between. If anything, rigs protect habitat (on the shelf anyway) 'cuz no trawler in their right mind will risk his nets in the immediate area. Yeah, kudos to inshore rigs for acting as trawling deterrents. Build more I say, they make great Fish Aggregation Devices (FAD's).

Sound pollution tends to run off whales and dolphins, but the Gulf of Mexico is naturally poor in both (excepting the cockroach-like bottlenoses). Noise pollution would be more a problem along migrational paths or calving areas, which the GoM also lacks.

I guess one could argue that extraction might starve out the seep communities, but that's distant future theoretical. Designating a few protected areas would be a nice touch though. The region around Green Knoll would be perfect, and DeSoto Canyon's got enough weird attributes that it should be left alone on general principles. I found a new anemone up there.

We tried to collaborate with BP years ago on using their ROV's, and it didn't get anywhere beyond a pretty poster and some pilot-donated critter footage. Man was I ticked off at the wasted effort. And now the idea's started up all over again in the new Galveston lab. Maybe it's second time the charm.

 

[ReefHound]

hehehe... you're still missing it

the warming trend of the last two centuries or so is unique

it is totally unlike anything that has happened during the past ten millenia

the warming trend itself has only been underway for less than 150 years

see?

You had said "for at least the past ten millenia, the current warming rate has been unprecedented".

I interpret that as saying the current warming rate has been happening for ten millenia since there is only one time period defined there.

It appears now you intended it as "compared to the past ten millenia, the current warming rate has been unprecedented"?

I think I get your point now but you've no basis to question my comprehension for interpreting an ambiguous statement differently.

 

[H2Andy]

ah ... i was quoting from an article, which cite i gave

might help if you read the whole thing for context. here's the quote:

In 2001 a panel representing virtually all the world's governments and climate scientists announced that they had reached a consensus: the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The consensus itself was at least a century in the making.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/WEADIS.html

you're the one who misunderstood the statement. i was simply trying to clear it up.

I think I get your point now but you've no basis to question my comprehension for interpreting an ambiguous statement differently.

yes i do ... you are not taking into account what the modifier is modifying in that clause

it's no big deal ... like you say, it's kind of ambiguous

 

[Bill51]

Eh, the corals are few and far between. If anything, rigs protect habitat (on the shelf anyway) 'cuz no trawler in their right mind will risk his nets in the immediate area. Yeah, kudos to inshore rigs for acting as trawling deterrents. Build more I say, they make great Fish Aggregation Devices (FAD's).

Sound pollution tends to run off whales and dolphins, but the Gulf of Mexico is naturally poor in both (excepting the cockroach-like bottlenoses). Noise pollution would be more a problem along migrational paths or calving areas, which the GoM also lacks.

I guess one could argue that extraction might starve out the seep communities, but that's distant future theoretical. Designating a few protected areas would be a nice touch though. The region around Green Knoll would be perfect, and DeSoto Canyon's got enough weird attributes that it should be left alone on general principles. I found a new anemone up there.

We tried to collaborate with BP years ago on using their ROV's, and it didn't get anywhere beyond a pretty poster and some pilot-donated critter footage. Man was I ticked off at the wasted effort. And now the idea's started up all over again in the new Galveston lab. Maybe it's second time the charm.

At the last DoI hearing before this bill was passed, we had some Texas A&M grad there who is now in the gas business and is also a diver. He’s going to try to get some Aggies involved in the environmental studies that the bill requires, so you may get a good shot at the ROVs this time around. I like the idea of the rigs and the pipelines creating no-trawler zones and wish I would have had that idea to include in my presentation – but we got a few of the needed Senators moved in the right direction and got it signed anyway.

The sound pollution we were talking about was actually more bottom vibration during drilling, and since I don’t know that much about the deep bottom over there, I don’t know how big an impact it will be. I was thinking in terms of our deep coral Oculina reefs over here.

I can just see an environmental group suing an oil company in 50 years because there’s no longer enough oil seeping into the GoM to support the oil eating critters.

I had a friend doing her marine biology work at Galveston a few years ago and loved the tour I got of the campus – and the ship she cruised on as among other things, the environmental diver.