More global warming heresy...

[Larry Gude]

I will stand corrected...

Actually, 18 years after the spill, the area is still fouled by oil:



http://www.kyw1060.com/pages/330934.php?contentType=4&contentId=394265



http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070131/NEWS/701310394

..if you and the professor are willing to concede it is significantly better than it was at the time of the disaster and will, as stated, in mere 'decades' be a very distant thing of the past.

In other words, it's not the end of the world AND some very reasonable actions have been taken; double hulled tankers, every ship is piloted in harbor my a harbor master, etc.

So, again, it's not abolition of fossil fuels that is the need.

 

[LordStanley]

To lower CO2, plant more trees and plants.

 

[PsyOps]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek/

As the emotional, witch burning freight of global warming hysteria rumbles down the track, on the verge of becoming completely out of control, it's always nice to read yet another piece of REASON.

What I find particularly strange about this argument is these global warmests can use the shortest span of time to prove what we are doing isn't working but if you try to use, say for instance, this past weeks COLD (DANG COLD) weather as an argument to prove the globe isn't warming at all, they throw at you "...well, you can't just take a small piece of time out. It has to be measured over years and years."

 

[PsyOps]

Actually, 18 years after the spill, the area is still fouled by oil

I hate to put a simplisitc argument to this but... Where did oil come from? Where does everything we make come from? (Now read in a loud, echoey James Earl Jones voice)

THE EARTH!

That's right boys and girls... Everything we make, everything we do comes from the earth, and to the earth it will return.

 

[jazz lady]

I will stand corrected...
..if you and the professor are willing to concede it is significantly better than it was at the time of the disaster and will, as stated, in mere 'decades' be a very distant thing of the past.

Better, yes. But will it ever be back to the way it was, even in decades? I sincerely doubt that based on the unique characteristics of this happening in a sound and not the open ocean:

Today, the Exxon Valdez disaster doesn't even rank among the top 50 largest oil spills around the world. But it may have caused more environmental damage than any other spill.

Prince William Sound is home to an abundance of wildlife: birds, whales, salmon, sea otters, and bald eagles. It's a remote and spectacular location with thousands of miles of rugged coastline. The oil penetrated deeply into its boulder beaches. That it happened inside a sound, and not in the open ocean, made matters far worse.

"When you have an enormous oil spill in a semicontained environment like that, the oil just sloshes around and contaminates everything it touches," Rice said. "There is bound to be widespread devastation."

The initial response to the spill is generally seen as inadequate. For the first three days, the 11 million gallons of oil slowly spread in flat, calm seas. Despite an opportunity to skim it before it hit the shorelines, almost no oil was scooped up. When a storm hit, the oil crashed onto the coast.

On the surface Prince William Sound's environment has returned to its prespill condition. Wildlife flourishes. Most commercial fisheries are doing well. Even tourism is booming.

But look a little closer and the picture gets a little murkier. In some of the hardest-hit areas, swaths of oil—buried just a few inches below the surface—run across the beaches. Water may circulate to the edges of the oil, but not through it.

"There are isolated pockets where you can still find effects of the oil spill," Rice said.

Among the animal species that have not recovered are common loons, harbor seals, harlequin ducks, and Pacific herring.

Sea otters, which eat clams buried underground, are particularly affected by the subsurface oil. The clams may be clean, but sea otters may get oil on their fur, which requires energy to cope with.

"It's like getting the flu three times a year instead of once," Rice said. "It makes you sicker and less capable of feeding. Sea otters eat 25 percent of their body weight every day. If that's lowered to 15 percent over, say, ten days, they will probably die."

Sea otters have been found with increased levels of a substance contained in petroleum products known as cytochrome P450.

"Knowing what we have found out in the last three to four years about sea otters and harlequin ducks, we probably would have been out there cleaning those beaches earlier," Rice said. "But we didn't know that at the time. We assumed that by 1992, we wouldn't see any more significant oil effects."

Because the Exxon Valdez spill occurred in such a pristine area, it has turned into a model for studies of other oil spills. Scientists have been able to quantify longer-term effects of oil on growth and mortality without interference from other sources of pollution.

"One of the lessons is that oil will persist longer in some habitats than we would have expected," Rice said. "The years three through ten [after a spill] may be as significant as years two and three combined, or even the first year."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0318_040318_exxonvaldez_2.html

Even the best scientific minds severely underestimated the long term effects of this disaster.

In other words, it's not the end of the world AND some very reasonable actions have been taken; double hulled tankers, every ship is piloted in harbor my a harbor master, etc.

Very true and I applaud the efforts to try to make sure it never happens again, but unfortunately in this case it was too little too late and something that never should have happened in the first place:

The scope of the spill blindsided everyone.

"At the time, we didn't have the spill-response depots. We didn't have skimmer vessels. We didn't have the amount of boom [floating barriers used to contain spills] for a ship that large," Phillips said. "There were so many things we were not prepared for. People didn't pay attention to what it meant to transport that much oil in pristine water. Nobody dreamed that this could ever happen."

Today the oil-transportation industry is far more regulated. Tankers must have double hulls. Emergency plans must be regularly reviewed. In the town of Valdez, ships must be guided by escort tugs until they enter open waters.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0318_040318_exxonvaldez_2.html

But they've also been lax in making sure the regulations are complied with:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska _ Tanker companies have admitted to the state that their Prince William Sound oil-spill response barges _ vital tools for a cleanup operation _ can't hold as much oil as originally specified.

Now state pollution regulators are mulling whether to hit the ship operators with a violation or fine.

"It's an urgent issue and we are taking action," said Betty Schorr, industry preparedness program manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The barges would play a critical role in the event of a large spill, serving as holding tanks for oil and oily water skimmed from the Sound.

Tanker operators for oil companies BP, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil and others disclosed in a "notice of nonreadiness" to the state Thursday that barges arrayed around the Sound can hold about 68,700 barrels or nearly 2.9 million gallons less than previously thought.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/scienc...s_lacking_storage/index.html?source=r_science

So, again, it's not abolition of fossil fuels that is the need.

I never said it was. Are fossil fuels playing a part in global warming? At one time I would have said a definitive yes and they are the major cause of it, but now I'm not so sure but do feel it's had SOME impact to what may well be a natural phenomenon. It's very hard to quantitate how much it has had when there are so many other variables that must be accounted for and taken into consideration.

 

[jazz lady]

I hate to put a simplisitc argument to this but... Where did oil come from? Where does everything we make come from? (Now read in a loud, echoey James Earl Jones voice)

THE EARTH!

That's right boys and girls... Everything we make, everything we do comes from the earth, and to the earth it will return.

But where did the oil come from? That's right - DEEP within the crust of the Earth. It doesn't naturally occur at the surface level or in the oceans, where LIFE happens. Do they find any sort of life in oil deposits? No, because they're not conducive to sustaining life.

 

[Larry Gude]

Ok...

Very true and I applaud the efforts to try to make sure it never happens again, but unfortunately in this case it was too little too late and something that never should have happened in the first place:

But they've also been lax in making sure the regulations are complied with:

otters have been found with increased levels of a substance contained in petroleum products known as cytochrome P450.

...as long as there have been bars and shoals, otters have been getting tanked (ered?) Right?

 

[Otter]

...as long as there have been bars and shoals, otters have been getting tanked (ered?) Right?

exactly.

 

[itsbob]

But where did the oil come from? That's right - DEEP within the crust of the Earth. It doesn't naturally occur at the surface level or in the oceans, where LIFE happens. Do they find any sort of life in oil deposits? No, because they're not conducive to sustaining life.

It used to be on the surface in abundance.. There are stories of the native americans in PA using the oil pools to make torches, and to make fires to cook with.. then it went to shovelling down to the oil.. then someone had to invent a drill to get to it. As time passes we have to go deeper and deeper into the oil reserves. I wouldn't doubt that somewhere you can still find an above ground oil pool, but it would take a lot of searching.

 

[Larry Gude]

Yeah...

It used to be on the surface in abundance.. There are stories of the native americans in PA using the oil pools to make torches, and to make fires to cook with.. then it went to shovelling down to the oil.. then someone had to invent a drill to get to it. As time passes we have to go deeper and deeper into the oil reserves. I wouldn't doubt that somewhere you can still find an above ground oil pool, but it would take a lot of searching.

...and what about the La Brea Tar pits, huh Jazz? Like in the one episode when Fred and Barney are...

 

[PsyOps]

But where did the oil come from? That's right - DEEP within the crust of the Earth. It doesn't naturally occur at the surface level or in the oceans, where LIFE happens. Do they find any sort of life in oil deposits? No, because they're not conducive to sustaining life.

I'm not implying that dumping oil on the surface of the earth is a good idea. I'm simply stating that eventually the earth cleans itself. Always has, always will.

 

[jazz lady]

It used to be on the surface in abundance.. There are stories of the native americans in PA using the oil pools to make torches, and to make fires to cook with.. then it went to shovelling down to the oil.. then someone had to invent a drill to get to it. As time passes we have to go deeper and deeper into the oil reserves. I wouldn't doubt that somewhere you can still find an above ground oil pool, but it would take a lot of searching.

Of course some of the oil is going to leak to the surface. It's the nature of our everchanging planet. As the ground shifts, some of it is going to be squeezed to the surface.

But the vast majority is still underground and no lifeforms can exist in and around it.

 

[PsyOps]

Of course some of the oil is going to leak to the surface. It's the nature of our everchanging planet. As the ground shifts, some of it is going to be squeezed to the surface.

But the vast majority is still underground and no lifeforms can exist in and around it.

Isn't what humans do part of nature?

 

[Kyle]

Isn't what humans do part of nature?

So Smoking is natural!



Cigarette Smoke for everyone! Hip, hip.. Horray!

 

[jazz lady]

I'm not implying that dumping oil on the surface of the earth is a good idea. I'm simply stating that eventually the earth cleans itself. Always has, always will.

But at what cost to what's already here? Radioactive materials are found in nature. Should we just dump our nuclear waste in the oceans because nature will "eventually" take care of it? How about our garbage? Just dump it in the ocean because nature will clean up after us?

The Earth can only do so much as such a rate of speed to cleanse itself. But in the meantime we're polluting the environment so much that we're killing off species; killing the rivers, bays and oceans flora and fauna with our toxins; and chopping down the rainforests at an alarming rate. We've upset the balance of nature in so many ways: pollution, invasive non-native species, deforestation, you name it. Just how much CAN the Earth take?

 

[Larry Gude]

Let's talk...

But at what cost to what's already here? Radioactive materials are found in nature. Should we just dump our nuclear waste in the oceans because nature will "eventually" take care of it? How about our garbage? Just dump it in the ocean because nature will clean up after us?

The Earth can only do so much as such a rate of speed to cleanse itself. But in the meantime we're polluting the environment so much that we're killing off species; killing the rivers, bays and oceans flora and fauna with our toxins; and chopping down the rainforests at an alarming rate. We've upset the balance of nature in so many ways: pollution, invasive non-native species, deforestation, you name it. Just how much CAN the Earth take?

...effective solutions then starting with raw numbers; 6,000,000,000 people.

How many can the planet sustain and at what living standard?

 

[jazz lady]

Let's talk...effective solutions then starting with raw numbers; 6,000,000,000 people.

How many can the planet sustain and at what living standard?

And that, my friend, is the crux of the problem. Earth has never had a population of humans this great. At what point does it reach the breaking point?

Let's talk first about the basis of all human life: potable water. We already know we're running short in certain areas and other areas never had enough to begin with. In our area and at the rate we're consuming it, they've estimated the aquifers will only last until 2030.

http://www.stmarystoday.com/water_ok_through_2030.htm

What then? And we in this area only a small part of the problem. How about other parts of the US like Arizona or even worldwide? It's not a pretty picture.

 

[Larry Gude]

Well...

What then? And we in this area only a small part of the problem. How about other parts of the US like Arizona or even worldwide? It's not a pretty picture.

...as Marie said..."Let them drink beer."

 

[kwillia]

And that, my friend, is the crux of the problem. Earth has never had a population of humans this great. At what point does it reach the breaking point?

Let's talk first about the basis of all human life: potable water. We already know we're running short in certain areas and other areas never had enough to begin with. In our area and at the rate we're consuming it, they've estimated the aquifers will only last until 2030.

http://www.stmarystoday.com/water_ok_through_2030.htm

What then? And we in this area only a small part of the problem. How about other parts of the US like Arizona or even worldwide? It's not a pretty picture.

Excellent point, Jazz!

 

[kwillia]

...as Marie said..."Let them drink beer."

No water = NO BEER