Dying Oceans

[AfterDark]

How can we forget this old saw:

The Population Bomb - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Early editions of The Population Bomb began with the statement:

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...[5]

 

[100days-a-year]

Negative koolaid sells better.Apopcalyptic shows are all over TV be it disease,war,climate,meteors,magnatars,gamma ray bursts it seems hope,faith and perserverance are outmoded...

 

[Francisco Deluxe]

A gold star for your special thumbs and the right to own the planet that they bring you.

Congrats on your ability to think up special gadgets. You must be very proud of yourself.

Really? So you don't buy toilet paper?

---------- Post added November 15th, 2013 at 12:44 PM ----------



Thanks to my opposable thumbs and ability to think up clever gadgets to kill things...I think I do own it!

---------- Post added November 15th, 2013 at 01:15 PM ----------

Let's not forget that what we really need to do to save the environment is reduce our use of aluminum because of the huge amount of energy required at the smelter to power the electrodes. There's a reason every aluminum smelter is near a coal fired power plant.

Oh, wait Scuba Tanks are made from aluminum! (So are the engine blocks in high efficiency little cars.) OK. No problem. We'll use steel tanks. Ooops, the galvanizing uses zinc. Producing zinc leaves piles of cadmium as a byproduct. Cadmium....bad. Ohhh nooo.

Oh, so I guess you can't use electric cars with big batteries either. Ever been in a battery factory? It'll kill you.

So, I guess we'll all just have to have jobs that don't really produce products. Oh, OK, so now we will freeze to death or starve. Can't even have an axe to chop wood for the winter since someone would have had to forge the axe head somewhere. Maybe we can all be teachers....Oops, no... cuz producing paper is bad, computers are full of toxic resins and heavy metals. (Ever been in a circuit board crystal plant?)

OK, Let's make a deal. You starve and freeze yourself to death and I'll use the scuba gear you don't need anymore.

---------- Post added November 15th, 2013 at 01:23 PM ----------

You didn't happen to use a diesel powered, aluminum hulled boat to get to the last dive site did you? And I'm sure you used a leather, foot powered compressor to fill your pig's bladder air tank.

 

[Adventure-Ocean]

I have seen global warming change the reefs in Palau. I've seen over fishing cause unchecked algae growth that was killing the coral on Guam. My good friend worked years creating protected reef areas around the island that in ten years has restored those areas. We battled to get reef barrier nets outlawed but ran into cultural objections. Laws are being created all over the world trying to save our environment. The squeekie wheel gets the grease. We have to squeek long and hard to help turn the thinking around. Though our environmental losses have been great, we have to focus on the future. The answer is in teaching our children and acting to help the environment ourselves. At least I believe there is hope there. Adventure-Ocean

 

[Hank49]

Weather and climate are not the same thing ... one is short-term and local, the other is long-term and global. Predicting weather is based on observances of what we see happening today, and making a projection based on assumptions of how the dynamic variables that affect weather are likely to interact. Predicting climate change is more about looking at trends, and projecting those trends into the future ... and once again based on assumptions of how variable conditions are likely to interact.

Nobody has a crystal ball ... but conceptually it isn't all that much different than how we, as divers, determine what's "acceptable risk" of getting DCS. In our case, we hedge our bets by adding layers of conservatism to our theoretical models ... and we still occasionally get it wrong and end up with what we call an "undeserved hit". I suspect that's pretty much what these climate predictions are attempting to do as well, but in the case of climate, an "undeserved hit" has the potential for wiping out our species ... and taking a lot of other species along for the ride ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

If someone were given the job to make sure that global warming stops......or if you want it to continue...or cool....and they had all the resources, meaning they could stop all automobiles from operating, or stop all coal fired power plants. etc etc...would you believe they could do it? I wouldn't want that job...meaning I would be shot if I failed one way or the other. That would be fricken hard. ....although you do have a 50/50 chance I guess.

But think about that. Jo Blow Corporate Exec, was just given the job to stop climate change.......okaaaayyyyy..

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Genie's already out of that bottle Hank ... ain't no putting it back in. Best we can hope for is that the upcoming generations are capable of adapting to the "transitions" that are occurring. Maybe ... maybe not ... humans are very good at adapting.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Doomnova]

If someone were given the job to make sure that global warming stops......or if you want it to continue...or cool....and they had all the resources, meaning they could stop all automobiles from operating, or stop all coal fired power plants. etc etc...would you believe they could do it? I wouldn't want that job...meaning I would be shot if I failed one way or the other. That would be fricken hard. ....although you do have a 50/50 chance I guess.

But think about that. Jo Blow Corporate Exec, was just given the job to stop climate change.......okaaaayyyyy..

No but we can sure as hell try and limit what we are doing by using/developing more effective methods of generating energy and burnables. I know right now in canada 10% of our fuel is ethanol based from corn. You know why the oil giants let that go through? They make between 5 and 7 times as much as they loose from having 10% less fuel in our gas tanks by the time you work in the fuel needed to harvest, transport, and fertilize the crops.

ethanol from algae is a viable alternative that the oil companies have been killing for decades every time someone even gets close to a solution because it would be one of the few things at this time that can effectively produce enough fuel for us to burn (also the technology would thrive in places that are not NA, Europe, russia, china, and or most OPEC nations). a single acre of corn globally yields on average 6-10L of ethanol per year. Alage so long as it has the nutrients it needs the right type of water and enough sun will and does grow like a damn weed I should know diving in the saanich inlet can be 40-50ft of vis one day and the next we have a bloom so bad you cannot see your budy and arms length away for the upper 30-40ft of the water column and when you get under it your in the middle of a damn night dive. So yes we will still need some stuff from the oil companies but algae can be grown into masses that are as thick as a paste refined and burned hell with a bit of not very hard organic chemistry(that anyone having taken 2 basic organic chem courses can tell you how) you can make octane from ethanol. But the fact is the oil field elmploys a massive amount of people who for most of their education level are vastly over paid and the people who are running the show are doing every blood damn thing they can to stop anything that threatens them from being put out of/reduced in business because they know that beyond their little niche in the world they really are not liked by many and there are enough people that are effected by this (atleast in canada) that politicians can bank on the support of oil companies.

I grew up in Alberta I've seen the game. I've seen the people that work these jobs and most of them well lets just say are not people I like to hang out with there is a reason we pretty much class the whole oil field sector as "Rig Pigs".

If I had all the resources at my finger tips I would make the change in a heartbeat. I would also be happy to take the flack from this generation of people with their heads shove so far into the dirt that they can see the red glow of the mantle. Because I know what I would be doing would be doing everything I can to ensure that the future generations have a world they can live in without having to deal with the **** storm that is coming and it won't be no act of god it will be an act caused by the last 3 generations. If it means slowing down progress well guess what it sucks but oh well its better than going far to fast as we are right now and just waitng for a elk we didn't see to cross the road and slamming into it going 100kph.

Also to those saying people cannot predict the weather. Yes weather is a PITA to predict because small term scales are very hard t o predict due to the butterfly effect. I would dare any of you who bitch about to take a basic computational weather class and just try to the basic math behind it I would bet half your heads would explode in the first week seeing how much actually goes into the models that are used and how just one little thing in a short term forecast can mess up the plotted pattern. Also we have very little geological information of past weather. A storm line here a small weather disturbance there. But they are caused by massive events like hurricane sandy and the like and usually are not well preserved but climate that is a whole other kettle of fish. That is preserved in the geological record. sedimentation rates of rivers, coral formation rates and types(also shows up as a way to look at acidity of the oceans but there are much better ways to see that), ice cores from major ice sheets. That information is there and while we do not know everything we do know that what we are doing has no precedent in geological record and anything that is even close are outcomes I hope that do not come to pass which is another Permian level mass extinction. I would much rather be sure that something like that is not caused by us and slow things down then risk us going the way of the dodo because we were too stupid to know what a rat was.

Just some food for thought.

 

[AfterDark]

If someone were given the job to make sure that global warming stops......or if you want it to continue...or cool....and they had all the resources, meaning they could stop all automobiles from operating, or stop all coal fired power plants. etc etc...would you believe they could do it? I wouldn't want that job...meaning I would be shot if I failed one way or the other. That would be fricken hard. ....although you do have a 50/50 chance I guess.

But think about that. Jo Blow Corporate Exec, was just given the job to stop climate change.......okaaaayyyyy..

And it most likely wouldn't matter a bit. We live on a dynamic planet spinning around on/in a very dangerous 3D billiard table. The forces of the planet and the universe are far stronger than anything we can put together. The enlighten among us claim to know/understand only 5-10% of the planet oceans, the same oceans the same people call the planet's temp regulator, yet they insist they can calculate what the planet's temp will be years from now. With only 5-10% understanding! Marvelous! But I ain't buyin' it. IMO there's little we can do to affect global climate changes good or bad; and we certainly do not know what the planet's temp will be years from now.

 

[Wingy]

From a geomorphologists viewpoint - climate cyclic change is and always has been and always will be part of the planets existence. I lecture about fossil fuels, conservation, alternate energy sources etc when doing sustainability units, and while I believe mans behaviour has exacerbated the environmental issues we are facing, theres also a lot of money to be made in climate change. If you google global warming why not google global dimming and you will find significantly less sunlight is reaching the earth each year.

We have heating periods, cooling period, periods of intense volcanic activity that lead to cooling periods and we have polar reversals. What we are basing our ''knowledge'' of our crucial environmental threats and hazards at the moment on are on for the most part observations over a very short timespan in the earths history. Check out an ice core sample, its millions of years old and shows the warming and cooling. Check out why we find fossils of ammonites in the mountains of Italy or Madagascar, because of sea level changes - and no one was using airconditioning then.

We have been in probably an abnormally long stable period for quiet some time. Theres a possibility that what we are seeing now is the beginning of the end of a superchron.

Regarding human overpopulation...the Malthusian Dilemma/Catastrophe was seen as far back as the 1700s...dont say we werent warned!

Malthusian catastrophe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Instead of Al Gores inconvenient truth i have an even more inconvenient one - we bought this on ourselves with our opposable thumbs. Thank the medical revolution, the industrial revolution, progress came with a price. We live longer, work less, dont die when we would have (chemo to organ transplants) and we are surviving when we shouldnt have (embryo transfer to in utero surgery) we are even taking longer to decay than we should thanks to our preservative rich lifestyle. We wanted to advance, we wanted progress and we wanted it without consequence.

Bring on a pandemic, bring on a war, bring on a meteor strike, go ahead yellowstone show us what you got, I double dare you. Heres the rub though, just not my family.

One an individual level we are pretty damned arrogant to believe we can control the planet. Im saddened each year as I see more people competing for contracting resources and more environmental risky techniques being used to supply those resources (methane hydrate test drilling for example).

Im not saying start doomsday prepping but lets put the state of the environment in perspective. There is hope, there are new cleaner greener technologies (Im working on phytoextraction and algal energy at the moment) but the scale and economies dont yet allow us to wave a magic wand and fix 8 billion human problems. Too many humans is the crux of the problem, the issue with human population culling while unsavoury has to be indiscriminate and thats where its unpalatable to say, ok, which child shall i choose to get rid of.

 

[dmoore19]

I believe the proper term is Oilfield Trash. Since I am 3rd generation Oilfield I should know what the proper term is. I guess we won't be meeting for dinner? Dang, and I was so looking forward to it. Have a nice day.

I grew up in Alberta I've seen the game. I've seen the people that work these jobs and most of them well lets just say are not people I like to hang out with there is a reason we pretty much class the whole oil field sector as "Rig Pigs".