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WoodrowSkillson posted:The point is you have to convince them to change, and good luck doing that from the developed world that has exploited all of the benefits of fossil fuels. Only massive outreach focused on modernizing the developed world would work, and we can't even feed all the people in Africa. Actually it is a 1000 times easier to set up green facilities in developing countries then in 1st. There is literately no established infrastructure there to dictate how power and other facilities do things since at best all they have is a piecemeal system. All it takes is someone to actually do something. TheFuglyStik posted:I agree convincing them to change isn't feasible when we can't do it ourselves. The point is to start somewhere rather than just hand-sitting because some country, industry, or lobby might be offended. You don't stay in a burning building just because it's cold outside. If world banks would support the loan for developing countries to further develop their power infrastructure, and those countries build green facilities due to more donations and help given with those kind of plants, more and more green facilities will be built. The more that are made the cheaper they become. Promote overseas green power and in turn green power for your home will be cheapen to the point you can compete with local coal. McDowell posted:And there's plenty of oil $$$ out there to encourage the atoms = bombs mentality. The only nuclear policy most politicians have involves getting rid of weapons. Oil does not equal electrical power. That 1% that is still used to produce power is a non issue. Those are a relic of older times and said plants will not last. Oil is transportation and heating. http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/ Zelthar fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Jul 21, 2012 |
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Jul 21, 2012 01:45
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Zelthar posted:Oil does not equal electrical power. That 1% that is still used to produce power is a non issue. Those are a relic of older times and said plants will not last. And electricity can be transportation (to some extent) and heating (to a large extent) as well. I'm pretty sure the idea is that the oil companies want to prevent it taking over more of those areas.
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Jul 21, 2012 03:18
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-Troika- posted:Actually, the blame for this one falls squarely on the shoulders of the environmentalist knee-jerk movement against nuclear power. They've done more to ensure the dominance of coal than any amount of advertising by the companies that build them could ever have accomplished. Nonsense, almost as silly as saying 13W > 60W.
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Jul 21, 2012 03:46
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VideoTapir posted:And electricity can be transportation (to some extent) and heating (to a large extent) as well. I'm pretty sure the idea is that the oil companies want to prevent it taking over more of those areas. Heating with oil is very small as well being natural gas has taken most of that market.(propane butane) GE is no push over.. heh nor are the other massive energy CO's It's hard to push around a market that has no need of you. Electricity has the potential to take over the transportation market, but not until a massive infrastructure change happens. That will take tons of money and open that market for oil to "buy" in. Our grid today can not take on the load. Oil shows their influence in the automotive market. Keeping electric out or to a laughing min. is a lot easier then going head on with power CO's. Throwing a few $$ at senator helps too.
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Jul 21, 2012 03:52
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Narbo posted:Nonsense, almost as silly as saying 13W > 60W. well when you factor in the loss of ARE FREEDOMS with the 13W, it does tend up being more.
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Jul 21, 2012 09:50
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 Looks like tipping points are being reachedquote:Unprecedented melting of Greenland's ice sheet this month has stunned NASA scientists and has highlighted broader concerns that the region is losing a remarkable amount of ice overall. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/24/greenland-ice-melt-nasa_n_1698129.html?utm_hp_ref=green Unfortunately, that kind of news is getting more and more commonplace. As an aside, though, I'd like to talk about the idea that our environmental predicament has little to nothing to do with a global population of 7 billion. As the common wisdom goes, most of our environmental maladies are caused by the portion of the population living in the Western world, rather than the fact that there are 7 billion of us on this planet. The population level would have a negligible impact on the environment, folks say, if the West didn't use so many fossil fuels. I just don't buy this logic.*** It isolates climate change as the major environmental concern and tends to overlook or ignore other problems, like the mass extinction that we've caused. All of our environmental problems are caused by the scale of human activity (which is directly related to the fact that there are 7 billion of us wandering around); climate change just happens to be the most extreme example. Slash-and-burn farming is a great example of something that doesn't involve fossil fuels that is unsustainable precisely because so many people are doing it. I think most people in this thread would rather see a shift in energy use in the West as opposed to a change in consumption patterns. Fine, let's roll with that and play out the scenario and see what happens. Let's assume no shift in first world consumption. I personally think it is unfair to expect the third world to stay where they are at as opposed to emulating what the first world countries are doing (I think most of you would agree). So let's go ahead and assume that the third world industrializes in some way that doesn't use fossil fuels (which is a huge stretch, but bear with me), and that their consumption patterns catch up. Where does that leave us? The scale of human activity is already off the charts - we use around 20-30% of the primary productivity of the planet (which measures the energy produced by photosynthesis that sustains literally all the life on Earth). It's pretty simple to deduce why we are causing an extinction event, but I digress. With third world countries at the same level as the first world, that number will rise due to how much more land-intensive it is to consume large quantities of meat. We still haven't addressed how energy will be produced, so let's just say wind. Wind power - widely regarded as one of the cleanest energy sources - becomes very problematic when scaled up, though less so than fossil fuels. I'm fairly certain if you scale any form of energy up to the levels at which we are using fossil fuels, you'll start to see environmental problems. We know what happens when we use lots of fossil fuels, and the only reason that we don't know how large-scale solar, wind, or nuclear will affect the environment is because we haven't tried it yet. Fossil fuel use is the most immediate problem and is undoubtedly the problem causing climate change. However, the reason why fossil fuel use is problematic is because of the scale on which it is taking place. Ultimately, the scale of human activity is the problem, and that has a great deal to do with how many humans there are. To put it simply, the human footprint is way out of proportion to any other creature on earth - it has taken a good chunk of time from a human perspective, but that complete disregard for any semblance of balance is finally catching up to us. ***I think we are massively overpopulated, but please don't put words in my mouth - I don't think we should kill people or implement draconian birth control laws. I think that the third world should be allowed to pursue as much industrialization as it wishes - anything less is hypocritical. I've got a pretty strong anti-authoritarian bent and I don't think anyone should be told what to do or how to live their lives. I think that the bottom line is that we have painted ourselves into a corner and there is no telling how we'll get out. I have no idea how this overshoot will be re-balanced. We've made massive changes to the Earth's ecology, and the Earth that we are creating may end up being very different than the Earth we are used to living in, and there's no telling whether or not we'll be able to adapt to the new Earth.
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Jul 25, 2012 01:20
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Well we are set to peak at around 8 or 9 billion before the birth rate starts dropping and the global population starts shrinking by the end of this century. The tricky part is trying to get through this century without civilization collapsing. Not surprisingly most of the estimates from the IPCC have been conservative, since they're always drawing on data that's 5-6 years old and shaped by governments who tend not to want to hear about catastrophic environmental collapse.
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Jul 25, 2012 01:30
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Zelthar, tell us about Clean Coal.
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Jul 25, 2012 01:32
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So what do you do when you're terrified and angry about living in the most hopeless era for humanity ever? Serious question. I mean, we were bound to go sometime, but why does it have to be while I'm alive? gently caress. I don't want to just watch this happen but that's basically all there is to do.
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Jul 25, 2012 02:19
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No posted:So what do you do when you're terrified and angry about living in the most hopeless era for humanity ever?  Alternatively, you could try challenging yourself to make as much of your own stuff as possible, in preparation for when you'll actually need to.
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Jul 25, 2012 06:07
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Try to ignore it, and politics too if you can manage it, and live a fulfilling life otherwise. Ignore the suffering of others and try to make yourself as ignorant of it as possible.
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Jul 25, 2012 06:32
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McDowell posted:Zelthar, tell us about Clean Coal. Why have you found some? Funny as I was talking about oil and it's effects/use in the power industry. If you must know my ideal power base would be Geothermal and Modern Nuclear/Thorium. We are so scared of Nuc power right now that we shut down a Nuc in California last winter(vibration wear issues) and have replaced it by refurbishing 2 retired gas plants with additional power imports from cross state. California who is suppose to be a "green" minded state choose spending more money on refurbishing 2 old plants and buying more from another then simply fixing the busted piping from the Nuc. In an interview, people around the Nuc were happy it was off, but didn't even bother to know where or how the power they were using was made. They called themselves environmentalists. http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=157129984&m=157133813 Your Sledgehammer posted:***I think we are massively overpopulated, but please don't put words in my mouth - I don't think we should kill people or implement draconian birth control laws. I think that the third world should be allowed to pursue as much industrialization as it wishes - anything less is hypocritical. I've got a pretty strong anti-authoritarian bent and I don't think anyone should be told what to do or how to live their lives. I think that the bottom line is that we have painted ourselves into a corner and there is no telling how we'll get out. I have no idea how this overshoot will be re-balanced. We've made massive changes to the Earth's ecology, and the Earth that we are creating may end up being very different than the Earth we are used to living in, and there's no telling whether or not we'll be able to adapt to the new Earth. We do have an out for when it comes to food supplies. Hydroponic farms. No soil use and closed water supplies. With these systems cities can produce their own produce foods in a controlled environment. The current "organic" food market is helping push more of these types of farms into production. Developing nations don't need fossil fuels to go modern. It can be done with other energy sources. (Geo/Nuc) The goal would be for the first world nations to supplement building of these types so developing nations could have easier access and choose not to use fossil. Most of the cost for Green power is upfront costs. But in the end it is all politics... It's only doom if we choose it to be. Zelthar fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Jul 25, 2012 |
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Jul 25, 2012 11:44
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I'm probably the most anti nuclear person in this thread, mostly as an irrational hangup of being a middle aged greenie who lived thru the cold war and and chernobyl. But god drat thorium is probably the answer if we can work out the rough edges to the technology. Well at least until some physics dudes figure out how to make fusion work, then its party-hat time on planet earth* *(Till we hit peak fish and then we're all hosed)
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Jul 25, 2012 13:26
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Just my share (from a public health professional who has to communicate risk to the general public) - the Nuclear industry, and even possible fusion-powered industry, will always face a challenge towards general acceptance by the general public. What matters is not how safe or stingent the facility is - but how the general public perceives how "risky" the system is. When looking at how people accept risk, imagine a grid where 0,0 is on the centre. Plotted along the axis is your Locus of control. Positive values are situations that people have control over, whereas negative ones are those that people have little control over. On the Y axis is how observable the item / behavior is. Is it something we see everyday, or is it something we need to trust into the knowledge of professionals? Positive values suggest an easy grasp of the situation because we see it everyday, whereas negative values suggest individuals know little about the topic. The more a person feels they have control over risk, and see it as commonplace, the less they perceive the situation as being harmful to their health. (Here is a great link to the article, in case my description is clear as mud. Page 4 is the graph in question). http://www.terrificscience.org/lessonpdfs/Perceived_Risks.pdf So, for example: Car accidents kill / maim or hurt thousands of individuals on a daily basis, and we hear it daily on the news so that raises our perceived risk - but we keep getting into our cars because we believe we have excellent control of the situation (I'm a great driver, I don't get into accidents). If you check out smoking, it's almost at 0,0. We feel we have adequate control (despite our knowelge of the addictive qualities of smoking) Nuclear, on the other hand, is way off into the the unobservable and low locus. We don't see nuclear facilities on a daily basis, the general public has little grasp on how nuclear fission works, and we don't have control over the process (for good reasons). The best strategy, then, would be to work on educating the general public.
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Jul 25, 2012 15:25
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UP AND ADAM posted:Try to ignore it, and politics too if you can manage it, and live a fulfilling life otherwise. Ignore the suffering of others and try to make yourself as ignorant of it as possible. It's pretty depressing that this probably the healthiest response possible in terms of personal happiness yet is also part of the reason why we're where we are. I'm starting to think humans just aren't cut out for this planet in the long run  (Long run unfortunately being a span of thousands of years rather than millions as people liked to believe in the past) quote:I mean, we were bound to go sometime, but why does it have to be while I'm alive? gently caress. I don't want to just watch this happen but that's basically all there is to do. This was pretty much my exact reaction to this thread this morning. It's pretty comical, we're ostensibly better off than most of our ancestors have ever been but if we're informed we get to realize that it's leading to our demise. rawdog pozfail fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jul 25, 2012 |
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Jul 25, 2012 20:48
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No posted:So what do you do when you're terrified and angry about living in the most hopeless era for humanity ever? I try to approach the possible extinction of our species in much the same way that I approach my own death - it will happen eventually and there is nothing I can do about it, so my best bet is to live the most fulfilling, healthiest life I can, have as much fun as I can, and do everything I can to help other people. For me, a great deal of living a fulfilling life and helping others at this point means learning about resiliency, adaptation, and successfully sustainable ways of living and trying to pass that knowledge along to others. To really get a grip on the predicament we find ourselves in, you've got to drop the anthropocentric mindset. When you're able to get away from it, you'll realize that anthropocentrism, on top of being a very silly way of looking at things, is the prime reason why we've done so much damage. For a moment, consider things from a geologic perspective. The Earth doesn't care whether or not humans thrive or go extinct. The idea that we are the glorious "final product" of evolution is something that we have chosen to believe, and it has no bearing on reality. Mass extinctions have happened before and they will happen again - we aren't even the first life form to cause a mass extinction. Mass extinctions and climate shifts result in a short period of chaos (short in terms of geologic time), followed by an evolutionary explosion where lots of new life forms fill the empty niches and finally by a long period of stability. What we're doing now will result in the same sort of process - lots of cool new creatures will fill up the Earth. Whether or not we successfully adapt to what we've done is a big question mark, but life will go on. Just because you'll eventually die does not mean that your life is in vain. By the same token, just because humans will someday go extinct does not mean that our existence is meaningless.
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Jul 25, 2012 21:18
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I mean, I understand that way of thinking, and it is calming in a sense. I guess my anger and frustration is less from, "We're all going to die!" and more from, "What a bunch of loving tools, we could have been better than this." I'm truly glad the Earth and life in general will be okay (unless we turn into another Venus or something), but to be wiped out by something so easily prevented if people just did something about it is just ghastly. Judging from what I've read, I'll be in my seventies by the time poo poo really starts hitting the fan, so I'm grateful for that. But, god, it's just all so stupid. That's what's so upsetting. But I suppose this has been said a dozen times over.
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Jul 25, 2012 22:02
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Yes, it is bad. But there is the will to address it, it just hasn't been harnessed yet. Actually addressing Climate Change was a definite theme of Occupy, but there are a few hurdles in the public perception from the decades of environmentalism: Denial - The official Right position. It's not happening, it's not a problem, liberal conspiracy, commies, hippies. Oil Uber Ales. We'll liquidate coal just like the Nazis did! Consumer - IF we all buy solar panels and Priuses crisis averted  The "media left", which I think scientists are finally condemning  Nihilism - We're hosed, consumerism isn't the answer, government is owned by Fossil Fuel interests. Nuclear will blow up and kill us, it cannot be controlled. It's all over. I take the position of a dramatic grassroots demand to move away from Fossil Fuels for Generating Electricity. But this requires breaking out of the mainstream perspectives on the issue. It's a very Star Trek motivation that we can aspire to something greater. That mankind can tame the atom just as we have tamed fire. It just requires taking a risk
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Jul 25, 2012 22:30
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It also requires a stunning level of hubris. From Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, which was written in 1989: quote:But because so much of our energy use is for things like automobile fuel, even if we mustered the political will and economic resources to quickly replace every single electric generating station with a nuclear power plant, our total carbon dioxide output would fall little more than a quarter. Ditto, at least initially, for cold fusion or hot fusion or any other clean method of producing energy. So the sacrifices demanded may be on a scale we can't imagine and won't like. Also, as I said earlier, it is the scale of human activity that is the problem. If you scale up nuclear to the level that we are currently using fossil fuels, I'd expect that we'd run into some major unforeseen environmental problems. For example, here's one proposed method for harvesting uranium from seawater: quote:Japanese researchers found out that they can harvest uranium from sea by cultivating genetically engineered gulfweed which will grow in sea at an unbelievable rate of two metres an year. The weed selectively soaks up heavy metals including uranium. Genetically engineered seaweed with an unprecedented growth rate that soaks up heavy metals, you say? Surely that couldn't cause any harm! (bioaccumulation of heavy metals in fish is a well-known problem)
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Jul 25, 2012 23:00
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Your Sledgehammer posted:It also requires a stunning level of hubris. I don't get this. Are you saying that trying to preserve our own species and hopefully others that would also be threatened by Climate upheaval is hubristic? I mean, yeah, new technologies will inevitably pose their own problems, but there's no reason to assume that said problems are insurmointable or that, if they are, we shouldn't strive for the course of action that causes the least harm to our species and our planet. Spiritus Nox fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Jul 25, 2012 |
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Jul 25, 2012 23:11
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It's not perfect but it's better than our current trajectory in my opinion. If we want to get Biblical humanity ate the fruit of knowledge (our unprecedented ability to observe, adapt, and develop), but we're denied the fruit of immortality (immunity from extinction). I don't know if it's hubris to try to save society, but we have to try. But yeah the balance of the natural world is changing (the end of nature as we know it) and a lot of power is going to be in our hands if we survive. We need to learn stewardship.
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Jul 25, 2012 23:13
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Your Sledgehammer posted:
You want a nice little depressing footnote to counter this? In terms of geologic time, the Earth really only has a narrow bit left for habitability. Due to the gradual increase of solar output over time as the sun burns through its store of hydrogen, the temperature will rise and in about 500 million years a combination of increased solar output along with subduction of water into the mantle due to plate tectonics will lead to plant life going extinct and a gradual depletion of oxygen in the atmosphere. So yeah, humanity is probably the greatest thing this ball of rock is ever going to produce. It took 4.5 billion years to get here..we don't have another 4.5 billion left.
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Jul 25, 2012 23:31
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TyroneGoldstein posted:You want a nice little depressing footnote to counter this? In terms of geologic time, the Earth really only has a narrow bit left for habitability. Due to the gradual increase of solar output over time as the sun burns through its store of hydrogen, the temperature will rise and in about 500 million years a combination of increased solar output along with subduction of water into the mantle due to plate tectonics will lead to plant life going extinct and a gradual depletion of oxygen in the atmosphere. All the more reason to survive long enough to make space exploration a thing. If we survive climate change and can't figure out a way to make long distance travel or viable outer-system colonies tick in 500 million years, we're hosed anyway.
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Jul 25, 2012 23:43
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No posted:I mean, I understand that way of thinking, and it is calming in a sense. I guess my anger and frustration is less from, "We're all going to die!" and more from, "What a bunch of loving tools, we could have been better than this." I agree completely. It's not knowing we're in a lot of trouble that's hard. It's knowing that most of my friends and family are more or less ignorant. I also am much more guilty about what's going to be here in 1000 years as opposed to 100. It's not just when you're in your seventies. This is going to be an accelerating process for thousands of years. What scientists view as "catastrophic" increases in temperature are all but guaranteed in those time scales.
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Jul 26, 2012 00:37
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Your Sledgehammer posted:It also requires a stunning level of hubris. Furthermore, you're pointing to an article that talks about how genetically engineered seaweed that not only absorbs heavy metals but can also absorb a fair amount of carbon from the oceans and then arguing that somehow it's going to increase the level of heavy metals in fish? The entire POINT of growing the weeds is to extract these heavy metals from the seawater, yet you're arguing that it's going to do the opposite?
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Jul 26, 2012 00:55
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Your Sledgehammer posted:
Grid power /= transportation power What is bad for grid(intermittent power, basic wind/solar) is quite useable for transportation. Most transportation happens during day light hours anyway. Transportation power is like charging and discharging large battery groups. It's because of the scale this works. Even if we don't go the full electric way and use bio diesel the fuel burn would still be carbon neural. Base power dose not have to provide for everything. Nor is there a magic bullet that we go 100% into. (until fusion) Though it is really not power type that is the issue but power storage. Right now we could double the daylight output of our current plants if we could come up with a decent storage method. In a lot of places power is next to free during night hours. Zelthar fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 01:01
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Spiritus Nox posted:I don't get this. Are you saying that trying to preserve our own species and hopefully others that would also be threatened by Climate upheaval is hubristic? I mean, yeah, new technologies will inevitably pose their own problems, but there's no reason to assume that said problems are insurmointable or that, if they are, we shouldn't strive for the course of action that causes the least harm to our species and our planet. No, that's not what I'm saying. What I am getting at is that any large-scale technological solution - though it may significantly reduce carbon emissions - will rapidly land us in the same pot of boiling water that we currently find ourselves in. Again, the problem is the scale of human activity. Any technology implemented on a mass scale is going to cause ecological damage that will eventually affect us. It isn't hubristic to try to save our species. It is hubristic to try to save our species at the expense of everything else. Also, Spiritus Nox, this post of yours and the one you made a few spots down just drip with anthropocentrism. Our planet, you say? Tell me, who appointed us ruler? I'm not trying to pick on you (or you either, McDowell), and I know I'm being bitterly sarcastic, but I'm trying to make a point with my needling. Anthropocentrism by definition is an ideology that puts humans above everything else. We adopted this mindset millennia ago to our grave peril. Such a mindset means that we will do what we feel is necessary to protect ourselves in the short term, even if it includes doing harm to the ecosystem. We try to justify it by saying it's just a little bit of harm here or there, but at that point it is too late, we are sliding down the slippery slope. Up until we began to understand climate change, we've also failed to recognize that a little harm here or there being done by 500 million, 1 billion, 3 billion people equals a whole loving lot of harm. The problem is that this kind of thing will always end up biting us in the rear end, because we are completely dependent on nature. We fail to understand how dependent we are because many of us live our lives in totally sanitized, nature-free bubbles. Any solution that is grounded in anthropocentrism is really no solution at all, because anthropocentrism is suicidal. We protect ourselves at the expense of the rest of the environment, but we are completely dependent on it in ways that we do not fully understand. The complexity of the planet's ecology is largely beyond our comprehension. A quick aside to Shipon: Did you know that fish eat seaweed? Your Sledgehammer fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 01:04
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Your Sledgehammer posted:It isn't hubristic to try to save our species. It is hubristic to try to save our species at the expense of everything else. Only that wasn't what I was suggesting - I was suggesting that we act to mitigate the damage we've caused to the environment, if for no other reason than that it is for our own best interests. If there's no solution that leaves the environment completely unchanged or puts no species at risk, then we take the path that endangers the fewest. Why are we making this into an either/or scenario? Why are we assuming that there is no technological solution that does not induce catastrophic environmental damage?
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Jul 26, 2012 01:22
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Your Sledgehammer posted:No, that's not what I'm saying. What I am getting at is that any large-scale technological solution - though it may significantly reduce carbon emissions - will rapidly land us in the same pot of boiling water that we currently find ourselves in. Again, the problem is the scale of human activity. Any technology implemented on a mass scale is going to cause ecological damage that will eventually affect us. And there's absolutely no way we can put nets around the seaweed to prevent fish from eating them, right? No way to block off fish from these sea farms whatsoever? While technological solutions may not be able to solve everything, neither does arguing that the only thing humanity can do is shrivel up and die (because we won't be able to survive as hunter-gatherers with the damage that has already been done, and agricultural society itself is "unsustainable"). What you argue is tantamount to the extinction of our race. We can't go back to the "way things were" (as if life were peaceful and we lived in harmony with the environment in the first place), nor should we try to. Shipon fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 01:35
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Your Sledgehammer posted:It also requires a stunning level of hubris. This particular point is not really relevant anymore. It was written before electric cars were a thing. He was trying to say that decarbonizing the grid isn't good enough because of petroleum. Well, that's not really true anymore. If electric cars take over, which they will eventually if oil prices keep going up, that would naturally incorporate personal transport energy into the grid. You can still argue that manufacturing a personal automobile is wasteful and uses too much energy in itself, but that's not the point he was making. Your Sledgehammer posted:If you scale up nuclear to the level that we are currently using fossil fuels, I'd expect that we'd run into some major unforeseen environmental problems. Well, there's two issues here... First, you could ramp up nuclear power without necessarily ramping up mining efforts. If you allow reprocessing and breeding, you can utilize nearly 100% of the natural uranium instead of 1% like we do now. For this to become practical the price of uranium fuel would need to increase by something like 2 to 3 times, if I recall correctly. Sea water extraction seems to be more expensive than this, so it might not happen at all. Second, your article did mention two techniques for extracting uranium from seawater - the first of those appears to be a purely synthetic method, by putting a chemical coating onto plastic sheets (you would presumably pick a plastic that doesn't degrade in sea water) For the seaweed accumulation technique, it would obviously need to be researched and vetted before rolling out, but generally when we modify an organism to bioaccumulate something, it reduces fitness. Without more information, you wouldn't expect them to out-compete the wild varieties or escape confinement and take over the ocean, or anything like that. On top of that, for a uranium farm to be at all successful in the first place, you would need to have a good method of shielding it from hungry fish before even considering the idea. lapse fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 01:37
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Shipon posted:Furthermore, you're pointing to an article that talks about how genetically engineered seaweed that not only absorbs heavy metals but can also absorb a fair amount of carbon from the oceans and then arguing that somehow it's going to increase the level of heavy metals in fish? The entire POINT of growing the weeds is to extract these heavy metals from the seawater, yet you're arguing that it's going to do the opposite? I would imagine it would have something to do with biomagnification - the smaller fish lower down the food chain who eat seaweed won't be affected as much as the larger, carnivorous fish.
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Jul 26, 2012 03:15
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Guigui posted:I would imagine it would have something to do with biomagnification - the smaller fish lower down the food chain who eat seaweed won't be affected as much as the larger, carnivorous fish. Yeah. Remember how DDT hosed up bald eagles, because the fish they ate ate the insects that were sprayed in the stuff? The fish we eat are carnivores who feed on fish that eat seaweed. Again, why you're not stopping the fish from getting to the seaweed, I don't know, but it's a potential issue that should be addressed if they do something like that.
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Jul 26, 2012 04:21
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Also, Spiritus Nox, this post of yours and the one you made a few spots down just drip with anthropocentrism. Our planet, you say? Tell me, who appointed us ruler? We did, when we smashed any competition and became the dominate species.
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Jul 26, 2012 04:51
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Greenland flash thaw visible from space. where doing it man. where MAKING THIS HAPEN. EDIT:Oh, already posted. Amazing how the discussion veered back toward politics. Big Hubris fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 05:08
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ErichZahn posted:Greenland flash thaw visible from space. For what it's worth, they're saying there's evidence that it might be part of a seasonal thing. While rising temperatures are definitely at least somewhat responsible for the astonishing data, we might not be as immediately hosed as it appears.
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Jul 26, 2012 05:19
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Spiritus Nox posted:For what it's worth, they're saying there's evidence that it might be part of a seasonal thing. While rising temperatures are definitely at least somewhat responsible for the astonishing data, we might not be as immediately hosed as it appears. Keep in mind our recorded observations can only explain so much, and that even a perfectly stable climate can have radical short term shifts. Use these things as consciousness raisers, not as "proof." The proof is in the temp measurements and such, not in one off anomalies like bad storms or a droughts.
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Jul 26, 2012 05:36
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What about the drought that the American Southwest is currently suffering?
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Jul 26, 2012 05:46
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What about it? Like the post above yours says, it doesn't prove climate change; maybe it could be a data point in some analysis of greater drought frequency, or length, or severity, or something. edit: I think the depletion of ground water and surface water resources in the southwest is definitely and obviously a consequence of the development of cities like Las Vegas, though. That is eminently provable.
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Jul 26, 2012 05:56
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I live in the American southwest. We have been off an on drought conditions for over 30 years. This is nothing new. Actually it is a prime example of why we must accurately and properly study what is going on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River "When the Colorado River Compact was drafted in the 1920s, it was based on barely thirty years of streamflow records that suggested an average annual flow of 17.5 million acre-feet (21.59 km3) past Lee's Ferry.[195] Modern tree ring studies revealed that those three decades were probably the wettest in the past 500–1,200 years – and that the long-term annual flow past Lee's Ferry is probably closer to 13.5 million acre-feet (16.65 km3).[196][n 7] This has resulted in more water being allocated to river users than actually flows through the Colorado." Because of this we have to drill more for well water and thus depleting ground water supplies.
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Jul 26, 2012 07:31
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Your Sledgehammer posted:No, that's not what I'm saying. What I am getting at is that any large-scale technological solution - though it may significantly reduce carbon emissions - will rapidly land us in the same pot of boiling water that we currently find ourselves in. Again, the problem is the scale of human activity. Any technology implemented on a mass scale is going to cause ecological damage that will eventually affect us. In every single post you come off as a melanholic manic depressive, I am surprised anyone has the patience to pretend to take you seriously. Like you admit yourself that there's nothing anyone can do to help, right? Obviously that would include you. Maybe you could stop your silly doom-saying then, and go start building log cabins in the wilderness or whatever. Unless you think there is some value to making people powerless and depressed, like yourself. It really is impossible to even read this thread just for the latest news. It's like trying to read a history book about World War II, except every page includes a statement from a holocaust denial group. It's disgusting.
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Jul 26, 2012 09:31
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