cars killing coral reef?

[FlipperSail]

RIDIVER501, energy analysis gives a shockingly different view on where the problem lies. It sounds like you have a guilty concience dude.

20% of the human race use 80% of the resources.

The average SE Asian family owns a 50 cc motorbike, the average North American family owns 5 four litre (or larger) vehicles. Even the hybrids and electric cars are a stupid myth. It pisses me off when I see some multimillionare celebrity spouting off about their new electtric car being good for the environment. THE ELECTRICITY COMES FROM OIL POWERED POWER PLANTS YOU MORON is what I want to scream at them.

Is it time for the world to point the fingre at the west YES. The west started the majority of the problems, and even worse, now they export them.

Oh Yeah, whoever said ozone depletion contributes to coral bleaching was wrong, except for the corals in the antarctic where the ozone holes are that is....... I guess.

I can agree on many of your points but I do not agree that all electric power comes from fossil fuels. Canadas electricity is 25% from hydro power (wind, solar I dont know). Sweden 30% of electricity is supplied by Hydro(wind solar I dont know). Denmark almost 15% is supplied by windpower alone. All these countries are high tech countries and fairly high power consumers. If all of a sudden ordinary people put up solar panels on their own roof tops and solar heating on top of that in these countries (and wind turbines) then the need for power plants would reduce drastically. It is not a dream for many (smart)countries to provide 100% of electricity by alternative energies. But ofcourse it would help if people used less energy. Most energy is wasted for unneccesary things.

 

[Kim]

I agree with you that alternative energy sources CAN be a good thing. Sometimes though they can also be bad. One of the worst is damming rivers for hydro power. In China they have just (or nearly, I'm not sure) finished the Three Gorges project. While this is going to provide a lot of power (which China needs very badly) the ecological effect on the Yangtzee river has the potential to be devastating - not to mention the economic effects that the people downstream will also suffer due to less water for irrigation etc.
Where I live in Japan the goverment used to have a subsidy for people who wanted to install solar panels. Seeing as installation and start up costs are something that most people have to pay back over a long time - 20 years or so - even with the subsidy not a lot of people did it. Now the goverment has stopped the subsidy and the solar panel industry has almost collapsed. Solar panels on roofs can be very vunerable to typhoons - which we get a lot of. Solar energy will probably be a good way to go when the technology improves - at the moment the production costs of solar cells is still too high for it to become mainstream - hopefully that will change in the future.
Wind turbines are another theoretical good thing - except for anyone who lives close to them!

 

[FlipperSail]

Another CO2 article. Excess CO2 (post industry) takes time to mix with the oceans, decades. It mixes best in hot waters which explains why El Ninos there is coral bleaching. Hot temp and the surface sea water mixes faster the CO2 that wants to even out the balance of higher saturation CO2 in the atmosphere by human activity. Thus High concentration of CO2 first in the hot areas of the world. This leads to very high ph in 10% of the ocean:

Ocean CO2 may 'harm marine life'


Shell of a live pteropod mollusc collected from the sub-arctic Pacific
Nearly 50% of the carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the atmosphere over the last 200 years has been absorbed by the sea, scientists say.
Consequently, atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas are not nearly as high as they might have been.

But the heavy concentration of carbon dioxide in the oceans has changed their chemistry, making it hard for some marine animals to form shells.

The research is published in this week's edition of Science magazine.


Industrial age

Since the beginning of the industrial age around 1800, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has increased from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 380 ppm.

Although it seems a lot, many scientists were surprised: the extra CO2 that turned up in the atmosphere was only about half of the total amount emitted.

Following an international 10-year survey, researchers found the "missing" CO2 - it had been absorbed into the sea.

On the time scale of several thousand years, it is estimated that about 90% of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions will end up in the ocean

Christopher Sabine, NOAA
"The ocean has removed 48% of the CO2 we have released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and cement manufacturing," said Christopher Sabine, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Seattle, US.

"If the ocean had not removed 118 billion metric tonnes of carbon between 1800 and 1994, the CO2 level in the atmosphere would be about 55 parts per million greater than currently observed."

Sea chemistry

This may have slowed global warming, but it also led to a change in seawater chemistry.

According to Richard Feely, of Noaa, and his colleagues, that might make life pretty hard for some shell-forming marine animals.

Corals, pteropod molluscs and some plankton (single celled organisms) pull carbonate ions from the seawater to produce their calcium carbonate shells.


The 10-year survey was an international effort
But, as the CO2 concentrations in the water increase, the carbonate ion concentrations decrease.

This means the animals lack the materials with which to build their shells.

And in areas where CO2 concentrations are particularly high, Professor Feely's team claim, the animal's shells can actually begin to dissolve.

"Based on our present knowledge, it appears that as seawater CO2 levels rise, the skeletal growth rates of calcareous plankton will be reduced - as a result of the effects of CO2 on calcification," said co-author Victoria Fabry, of California State University, US.

Patchy distribution

This effect is not witnessed uniformly throughout the oceans, however.

The survey has revealed that dissolved CO2 levels are rather patchy.

Because CO2 gets into the water by gas exchange at the surface - and because oceans tend to mix rather slowly - most CO2 is found near the top of the ocean, or in seas that are quite shallow.

"About half of the anthropogenic CO2 (i.e. produced by human activity) taken up over the last 200 years can be found in the upper 10% of the ocean," said Professor Sabine.


Sampling package used to collect water samples for the global carbon dioxide survey
That means shelled creatures that live in surface waters at higher latitudes may have the most trouble.

At the moment the oceans house a mere third of the CO2 that they could. Again, that is because our seas are "stirred" very slowly. So deep layers of water, which will eventually reach the surface, are far from being saturated.

"On the time scale of several thousand years, it is estimated that about 90% of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions will end up in the ocean," said Professor Sabine.

But the key word here is "thousands" of years. In the shorter term, as the surface waters become more saturated, the ocean may become a less efficient sink for CO2.

Just what that will mean for the Earth's climate, and for the marine ecosystem, is not quite clear yet.

Professor Sabine said: "Future studies of the carbon system in the oceans should be designed to identify and assess these feedback mechanisms [so that we can] determine the ocean's future role as a sink for CO2".

 

[archman]

Oh Yeah, whoever said ozone depletion contributes to coral bleaching was wrong, except for the corals in the antarctic where the ozone holes are that is....... I guess.

That was ME Mark! AAAAAA!!!!! :11:

Remember, there aren't just those nasty holes at the poles to mess up your radiation dose. Thin layers can ruin your day too. Ozone protection isn't an all-or-nothing deal. Here's a cute excerpt from the Union of Concerned Scientists; I highlighted the good stuff.

Importance of the Stratospheric Ozone Layer

Scientists cannot predict with certainty the consequences for life on earth if the stratospheric ozone layer weakens. In general, biologists and health professionals recognize that life on earth evolved under the protection of an ozone layer thick enough to remove much of the UV-B solar radiation known to damage cellular DNA. Accordingly, various organisms -- including humans -- may have difficulty adjusting to the higher UV-B levels resulting from a thinner ozone layer.

Medical studies have quantified some of the expected effects of increased UV-B levels, based on information from people exposed to higher than average UV-B levels, such as populations living at high altitudes and in the tropics, where the average ozone layer is thinner and the sunlight more direct. The most serious medical effects include increased incidence of cataracts and skin cancer, as well as evidence of weakened immune-system response. In addition, ecological research indicates that some crop yields will decrease and disruptions in marine food chains may occur.

 

[archman]

Patchy distribution
This effect is not witnessed uniformly throughout the oceans, however. The survey has revealed that dissolved CO2 levels are rather patchy.

Because CO2 gets into the water by gas exchange at the surface - and because oceans tend to mix rather slowly - most CO2 is found near the top of the ocean, or in seas that are quite shallow.

That's a good reference FlipperSail. That's gonna suck for tropical reefs... they're often in warm, poorly mixed waters and most definitely shallow. I'm so embarrassed... patch dynamics are one of my specialties. I'll just shut up now and leave chemistry remarks to the chemists.

 

[FlipperSail]

I agree with you that alternative energy sources CAN be a good thing. Sometimes though they can also be bad. One of the worst is damming rivers for hydro power. In China they have just (or nearly, I'm not sure) finished the Three Gorges project. While this is going to provide a lot of power (which China needs very badly) the ecological effect on the Yangtzee river has the potential to be devastating - not to mention the economic effects that the people downstream will also suffer due to less water for irrigation etc.
Where I live in Japan the goverment used to have a subsidy for people who wanted to install solar panels. Seeing as installation and start up costs are something that most people have to pay back over a long time - 20 years or so - even with the subsidy not a lot of people did it. Now the goverment has stopped the subsidy and the solar panel industry has almost collapsed. Solar panels on roofs can be very vunerable to typhoons - which we get a lot of. Solar energy will probably be a good way to go when the technology improves - at the moment the production costs of solar cells is still too high for it to become mainstream - hopefully that will change in the future.
Wind turbines are another theoretical good thing - except for anyone who lives close to them!

You are right Kim, Hydro is not the best energy source for the environment in all countries (or any country).

I understand typoons would make wind and solar difficult in Japan. Maybe vertical axis windturbines would be a solution fo Japan.

Vertical axis turbines are not as effective according to the "wind laws" but in certain situations they are the best. Ordinary horizontal axis windturbines cannot be erected on high story buildings in the city. But small vertical axis wind turbines can be errected by the tens or even hundreds on one appartment or office high store building roof top .

Advantages of vertical wind generators are:
- no noise
- safe and do not kill birds
- work in all winds up until roof blows off
- low visual impact
- not visable from the ground if they are on high storey roof tops.

The answer is plenty small scale windturbines ontop of evey bulding in the city. The roof tops on high-story appartment buildings are ugly anway with water tanks and tv antenas so there will be zero visual impact (not much difference) with vertical turbines on those roofs.


Problem is that those available commercially are expensive for some reason. All they are, are generators with the axel pointing upwards. On the axel is a twisted shape. They are alot cheaper to build than any other windturbines, and you can build them at almost no cost with scraps and old generators. Those made commercially are made for scientists that explore antartica etc because they work all the time in storm and ice conditions. The tower of an ordinary small scale windturbine would snap in antartica strom winds.

Efficiency of these are underestimated. For the first, the new permanent magnet generators are very efficient and also vertical turbines never stop spining unless there is no wind so the vertical turbines gather energy while horizontal turbines are forced to stop due to to high windspeeds. vertical turbines are not affected one bit by gusts. The just keep spinning in the same direction no matter how the wind changes. Small scale Horizontal turbine blades and towers can break in gale forces gusty winds.

Here are a few examples:
- http://www.windside.com/frames.htm
- http://www.ropatec.com/en/products
- http://www.core-international.nl/

The ropatec site describes very well the advantages. You also see and understand that these types of turbines would have low visual impact ontop of flat high story roof-tops and you can see that you could theoretically have hundreds of these on top on just on big roof top.

For in-city you would not need special turbines that tolerate ice conditions. All you need is a structure like the ordinary roof top ventilations that hold the generator. on high buildings you do not need towers. The turbines are high up enough just by being on the roof. I think people could build these them selves cheap. Problem is getting building owners to want to install things like these.

Anyway, living close to these windturbines is not a problem, it like having ventilation on roof tops, which all office and appartment building do so nobody would notice them. But for this to have any effect on the nations total energy, these need to be installed in masses on many, many buildings.

All the best though is to also reduce energy consumption.

 

[Kim]

FlipperSail -
In some situations in Japan what you describe might be quite usefull. The problem is though that because of earthquakes there are not so many high rise buildings as you might think. Sure there are still a lot in some places (stupid if you ask me but a historic legacy from high land prices) - but there is an awful lot of low rise stuff that wouldn't be that suitable.
As far as reducing energy consumption goes - I agree with you. More than half of the cars that you see on Japanese roads today have engines between 500-600cc! I'd never seen anything like it before I came here. These small cars (although big enough to carry 4 people quite comfortably) are used by the majority of Japanese people for journeys up to about 100 kms - more than enough for for most peoples daily needs. I've not seen them available in Europe and I often wonder why!
Ours looks like this:

Suzuki MR Wagon


Except it's blue.........and it's a turbo!

 

[FlipperSail]

FlipperSail -
In some situations in Japan what you describe might be quite usefull. The problem is though that because of earthquakes there are not so many high rise buildings as you might think. Sure there are still a lot in some places (stupid if you ask me but a historic legacy from high land prices) - but there is an awful lot of low rise stuff that wouldn't be that suitable.
As far as reducing energy consumption goes - I agree with you. More than half of the cars that you see on Japanese roads today have engines between 500-600cc! I'd never seen anything like it before I came here. These small cars (although big enough to carry 4 people quite comfortably) are used by the majority of Japanese people for journeys up to about 100 kms - more than enough for for most peoples daily needs. I've not seen them available in Europe and I often wonder why!
Ours looks like this:

Suzuki MR Wagon


Except it's blue.........and it's a turbo!

Its about what is hipp. What is trendy and cool. What is popular. Being popular and having popular stuff is more important to many Europeans and Americans. Europeans and Americans are suckers for advertising. They do as advertising tells them to. Advertising tells people Big cars are cool and people buy big cars. Big cars with big engines are on a rise in Europe, not only in America. Strange and sad, but this is true.

Yes, most people have cars that far exceed their daily needs but they use them daily. Maybe this will change with oil price, who knows.

 

[RIDIVER501]

I still disagree with your arguement.

You said in your original post

A. US citizens on vacation are causing the most damage to tropical coral reefs.

I have been on vacation in other countries and with other then US tourists, and I have seen the US tourist be more environmentaly conscious then those of other countries.

I disagree with your dismissal of the other ways coral are destroyed as being irrelevant. They are not. They are things that happen in the real world and they cause more damage then you are willing to admit or acknowledge.

Don't get me wrong. I think that coral needs to be protected as a resource. But if you were trying to raise money for this cause and I was a benefactor, legislater who could possibly help out the organization you represent, and approached me with your arguement as it stands I would thank you for you time and keep looking for another organization who was looking to save our marine resource but who didn't have the rosed colored glasses you are either wearing or trying to get others to wear.

becuase it appears to me you are either blinded by the info thrown at you on this issue or you are trying to cover up the holes in your support.

either way it is clear you have your ideas on this. so i wish you well. I am not sure what your background is but I hold a BS in oceanography and have done masters level work in marine affairs which essentially is business oceanography, concentrating on reef/fisheries management and artifical reef managment, so I do have a very good idea of what I am talking about.

Best of luck.

 

[archman]

RIDIVER, I respect your right to disagree, and won't discord with you further on this particular topic. I use this board to educate, not preach, and I apologize if it comes out as the latter type on occasion.

As for my professional qualifications, you can look up a crude hint of it from my personal profile, or PM me for details.