What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Marco1]

The sky is falling, the sky is falling, mass extintion, humans to blame, save the shrimp, kill the man.

Give it a brake Boston, that sort of crap propaganda has been going on for decades. Before it was the preachers who predicted the end of the word and they knew it all so well and to the day and the detail.

Now it is the green propagandist that know all better

[TeddyDiver]

Alroy: "We don't know how it will turn out"

Originally Posted by Marco1

Now it is the green propagandist that know all better

Kind of illiterate might one say

[hoytedow]

Originally Posted by Boston

and one more if I may


By Cain Burdeau, Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS—Far beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, deeper than divers can go, scientists say they are finding oil from the busted BP well on the sea's muddy and mysterious bottom.


Oil at least two inches thick was found Sunday night and Monday morning about a mile beneath the surface. Under it was a layer of dead shrimp and other small animals, said University of Georgia researcher Samantha Joye, speaking from the helm of a research vessel in the Gulf.

The latest findings show that while the federal government initially proclaimed much of the spilled oil gone, now it's not so clear.

At these depths, the ocean is a cold and dark world. Yet scientists say that even though it may be out of sight, oil found there could do significant harm to the strange creatures that dwell in the depths—tube worms, tiny crustaceans and mollusks, single-cell organisms and Halloween-scary fish with bulging eyes and skeletal frames.

"I expected to find oil on the sea floor," Joye said Monday morning in a ship-to-shore telephone interview. "I did not expect to find this much. I didn't expect to find layers two inches thick. It's weird the stuff we found last night. Some of it was really dense and thick."

Joye said 10 of her 14 samples showed visible oil, including all the ones taken north of the busted well. She found oil on the sea floor as far as 80 miles away from the site of the spill.

"It's kind of like having a blizzard where the snow comes in and covers everything," Joye said.

And the look of the oil, its state of degradation, the way it settled on freshly dead animals all made it unlikely that the crude was from the millions of gallons of oil that naturally seep into the Gulf from the sea bottom each year, she said. Later this week, the oil will be tested for the chemical fingerprints that would conclusively link it to the BP spill.

"It has to be a recent event," Joye said. "There's still pieces of warm bodies there."

Since the well was capped on July 15 after some 200 million gallons flowed into the Gulf, there have been signs of resilience on the surface and the shore. Sheens have disappeared, while some marshlands have shoots of green. This seeming recovery is likely a result of massive amounts of chemical dispersants, warm waters and a Gulf that is used to degrading massive amounts of oil, scientists say.

Animal deaths also are far short of worst-case scenarios. But at the same time, a massive invisible plume of oil has been found under the surface, shifting scientists' concerns from what can be easily seen to what can't be.

For Ian MacDonald, a Florida State University biological oceanographer who wasn't part of Joye's team, the latest findings confirm that government assessments about how much oil remains—especially a report on the subject by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in August—were too optimistic.

The oil "did not disappear," he said. "It sank."

And there would have been a lot less of it if the wells had been allowed to be drilled in shallower water where the problem would have been a much easier fix. Tree huggin' ****** have done about all they can to destroy industry in this country, but I am sure the Red Chinese will be MUCH more careful about protecting our marine environment.

Good grief, Nightowl, take an Ambien this evening or have a red wine. Gettin' ready to go strip some copper at some foreclosures?

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by hoytedow

And there would have been a lot less of it if the wells had been allowed to be drilled in shallower water where the problem would have been a much easier fix. Tree huggin' ****** have done about all they can to destroy industry in this country, but I am sure the Red Chinese will be MUCH more careful about protecting our marine environment.

You're repeating a simpleminded myth; anyone in the gas and oil industry knows better. BP was drilling in deep water because there's a lot of profitable oil there, not because it's the only place they're allowed to drill.

Here's a link to the results of an oil and gas lease sale from March of this year, only a month before the spill. Please note that 32% of the winning bids were for shallow-water drilling. Also note that the highest bid ($52.6 million) was for a tract 6,500 feet deep anyway - not because the bidder couldn't bid anything closer to land, but because there have been several huge discoveries in that area.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1745492820100317

[wardd]

that $52.6 mill should be used to clean up the mess

and what's left should be used to take every one to dinner

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by wardd

that $52.6 mill should be used to clean up the mess

and what's left should be used to take every one to dinner

I have a better idea. why don't we let BP pay to clean it up, since it's their mess, instead of using Anadarko's bid money?

[wardd]

think that will happen?

capitalism and the free market is only for the little people

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by wardd

think that will happen?

capitalism and the free market is only for the little people

I'm no valiant defender of the rich and powerful. But let's not get carried away, OK? BP is paying through the nose. This mishap has already cost them a fortune, and it's going to cost them a lot more before they're done.

[wardd]

but not the people that run it

just like the big banks, the ceo's aren't looking out for the bank or shareholders but themselves

we need to go back to what a corporation was in when the founding fathers ran things, you know the people the right idolize when it's to their benefit

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by wardd

but not the people that run it

just like the big banks, the ceo's aren't looking out for the bank or shareholders but themselves

we need to go back to what a corporation was in when the founding fathers ran things, you know the people the right idolize when it's to their benefit

Do you have some kind of a point to make directly related to the oil spill, or are you just ranting against the rich and powerful in general?

If you think Tony Hayward should personally pay for the cleanup, I assure you that he may be rich by our standards, but he doesn't have that kind of money. Nor can he be held personally responsible anyway, unless the spill can be traced to reckless, negligent or criminal behavior on his part.

The money for the cleanup will come from the assets and profits of BP, as it should. I see no reason to sidetrack money raised by the government, from the sale of leases to companies completely unconnected to the oil spill.

[wardd]

my rant is not against the rich per se, hell I'd like to be rich but against the system that allow the few to get that way at the expense of the rest and have no accountability

and I marvel at those that will never get to play at those stratospheric heights that are hell bent on keeping them there

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by wardd

my rant is not against the rich per se, hell I'd like to be rich but against the system that allow the few to get that way at the expense of the rest and have no accountability

and I marvel at those that will never get to play at those stratospheric heights that are hell bent on keeping them there

I think we're generally in agreement on the subject. It's just that you seem to sieze every opportunity to bring it up; sort of the other side of the coin from those who grab every chance they can to rant about liberals.

[wardd]

Originally Posted by troy2000

I think we're generally in agreement on the subject. It's just that you seem to sieze every opportunity to bring it up; sort of the other side of the coin from those who grab every chance they can to rant about liberals.

I enjoy rousing the opposing team

[Boston]

there is a difference between claiming that the sky is falling and presenting multiple corroborating studies all showing the same thing, that we have a problem and it demands attention before it gets away from us. Which by many standards it has already.

If you look at the state of the oceans its pretty clear that its an environment is serious trouble

for one thing thermal expansion is a known quantity, a well understood phenomenon and a simple result of a warming climate. So a perfectly good question is to ask what happens when the earths temp catches up to even the present level of CO2



its a pretty simple leap of logic to see that for hundreds of thousands of years temp and CO2 were very closely related. For many reasons the system maintains this relationship. So when we alter one of the major driving components of temp it stands to reason that the system will seek equilibrium just as it always has. That equilibrium in the case of CO2 at 380 rather than 280 which is where it started out at prior to the industrial age means that if not one single molecule of CO2 were emitted past today equilibrium is reached at about 1.2°C above baseline. Additional forcings at CO2 doubling (560) are estimated at ~5°C + or - ~1.5°C uncertainty.

It is a virtual certainty that the current trend in CO2 emissions will continue into the first half of this century with doubling occurring at around 2040

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that Earth will warm between two and six degrees Celsius over the next century. The range in estimate comes from running different emission scenarios through several different global climate models. Scenarios that assume that people will burn more and more fossil fuel provide the estimates in the top end of the temperature range, while scenarios that assume that greenhouse gas emissions will grow slowly give lower temperature predictions. The orange line provides an estimate of what global temperatures would have been if greenhouse gases had stayed at year 2000 levels. (©2007 IPCC WG1 AR-4.)

today at 0.7°C our oceans are dying fish stocks are depleted with algal blooms and jellyfish are becoming the predominant species

at + 2°C our oceans are rising, corals are all but gone and island nations are in huge trouble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-0_g...eature=channel

at + 3°C we can expect deadly heat waves and a partial breakdown in some plants ability to photosynthesize resulting in a CO2 feedback that raises temp even further

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_4xpzzsm2M

http://www.tagtele.com/videos/voir/16167

to deny the simple facts of recent history and of science is simply living with your head in the sand and waiting for the end

deal is to solve a problem there must first be a realization that there is a problem

by the way that 3°C is a low ball estimate ~5 is more like it although the IPCC is predicting a range of potential temps as can be seen in the previous graph

at + 4°C we are in huge trouble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skFrR...eature=channel

at + 5°C we can expect civilization to essentially collapse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nRf2RTqANg

deal is there is a ton of research being done in this area and to mindlessly deny its importance is ludicrous

cheers
B