Ocean News

Surprisingly, this fellow is more lucid and makes much more sense compared to our President's recent explanation of physical science concerning climate change.
In the first part, the reporters of the incident in question understandably get excited in this raw footage and become somewhat unprofessional, so once again, if language is bothersome to you, try this...cup your hands and hold them as far to the sides of your head as you can. With as much strength as you can muster, slam your cupped hands against your ears and that should turn off your hearing long enough to avoid damnation.

 

Hilarious. Us Aussies are very proud of our Clarke and Dawe's -
The Senator in the previous sketch( John Clarke) died last year, amid much praise for his comedic talents
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-10/best-of-clarke-and-dawe/8430226

 

I was beginning to think that maybe only I could see this thread and it was just a distraction from the management to keep me from fartin' in the car so to speak.
The video is an awesome bit, the timing is perfect. There is actually little in it to do with the topic of the thread, but the statement "it's outside the environment" closely parallels what was said a few days ago by the orange guy over here.
The videos in your link won't play, I'll search on youtube for some and watch them tomorrow, but there was there was an encouraging bit of news in one of the the side links...
Donald Trump has good reasons to be antsy in the wake of Michael Cohen's guilty plea https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-30/michael-cohen-guilty-plea-and-trumps-reasons-to-be-antsy/10570016
Cheers

 

Probably a good time to post a reminder: please let's keep this thread about ocean news - news about the ocean. Thanks.

Here is a long list of other forums where general political topics would be welcome:
https://www.google.com/search?q=politics forum

 

The oceancleanup party continues. They call the thing Wilson, from the movie...

Wilson Update - Tweaking the System https://www.theoceancleanup.com/updates/wilson-update-tweaking-the-system/

The whole approach seems to be like paying a million dollars to solve a hundred dollars worth of a trillion dollar problem. I think the project is a drop in the river, more of a whistling past the graveyard hope rather than a workable solution. It's not a very innovative solution, basically trying to scoop **** out of the water with a net, but it's hailed as a possible Nobel prize winning Jesus has returned innovation, despite mind boggling over estimations and proclamations of what it will accomplish. But money pours in so naturally everyone is pretty happy about that. I'm sure they have state of the art paycheck writing machines.

At least for now they seem honest in reporting how it is working, which isn't too well. Deployment is revealing bugs to be worked out which is normal. But if it ever works, it will only work on a certain portion of the problem, which is larger stuff that floats within 10 feet of the surface. It would be a good thing to remove that, no argument there at all. Well, except for the mini open ocean environments that develop around, on and under floating debris.

A lot of the plastic and garbage is suspended below 10 feet, a lot already sits on the bottom. All of it keeps breaking down to molecular size. Inter-molecular forces, technically known as glomm, result in chemical toxins, bacteria and various viruses glomming onto the plastic particles and then it all enters the food chain at the lowest level in massive amounts. I believe there is only one food chain and it is the same one we are on top of.

They say the ends of Wilson get to oscillating up and down and kind of propel it and cause the deployed bow shape to become more U shaped. The working principal of the thing is it has to either move faster than the garbage to more or less scoop it up, or slower than the garbage so the garbage moves in and gets trapped. I have ideas about solutions, but the whole thing seems just too preposterous to waste time on. I can't believe I've even made a post this long about it. Wah wah wah, amirite?

I mean, in post #3017, using their unfounded, overly optimistic numbers, I reasoned it would take 144,000 of these half mile long impediment to navigation contraptions just to keep pace with the amount of plastic garbage we put in the ocean every year. A few months ago this appeared out of nowhere and grounded itself in Myanmar...

177 meters long (that is 'pretty big' in American units) and no one had a clue where it came from. Imagine keeping track of 144,666 Wilsons that are 2,000' long.

I don't know. It seems like an exersize in trying to demolish the pyramids with sewing needles.

 

Dear online Veterinary Doctor,
My pet Albatross Fluffy has been acting poorly lately, all listless and unhappy.
It just lies around and has no appetite. What on Earth can be wrong with it?
I am so worried, can you please help me? Enclosed is a recent photo of the poor thing.
Thank you

 

I was trying to remember something when I replied last night and I just remembered what it was. Those whales that beached themselves...

More Than 140 Whales Die in New Zealand After Mass Beaching
https://static01.nyt.com/images/201...8c9226682-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp


And then I see this from Feb 2017....

More than 600 pilot whales have washed ashore New Zealand’s South Island over the past two days.
New Zealand just experienced its largest whale stranding in decades https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/11/14587770/pilot-whales-mass-stranding-beach-new-zealand-farewell-spit


That seems to be an amazing amount of whales and nobody knows why they do it.

.

 

Warming seas may have contributed

Stockin said New Zealand was currently experiencing some of the warmest ocean temperatures on record and she believed it was affecting whale behaviour.

"We've had an unusual week, which we haven't got to the bottom of, and it's fair to say it's been an entirely unusual year," she told AFP.
"I suspect a lot of that has been driven by the warmer sea surface temperatures that we're seeing at the moment.
"We definitely have a spike in temperatures, that's likely affecting where the prey is moving and as a consequence we're seeing prey moving and (whale) species following."
51 pilot whales die in new mass stranding in New Zealand as spate of deaths linked to warming seas https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/30/51-pilot-whales-die-mass-stranding-new-zealand/

 

Do they ever beach themselves on the barrier reef or get trapped in the reef lagoons?

 

97% of scientists believe global warming is man made. 97 out of 100 is a pretty solid number.

So the USA sides with the 3% (3 out of a hundred) who deny AGW and vote to become the 5% of nations (1 out of 20 ) who believe climate change is a hoax.

Think of that the next time someone mentions "American Exceptionalism".

19 of 20 world leaders just pledged to fight climate change. Trump was the lone holdout. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/12/trump-g20-climate-paris-accord-denial/

Why is that? How can such an odd thing happen?

Look at these two maps from different studies, does anyone suppose what they show has any relevance?




Education Reform Improving Education http://www.basicknowledge101.com/resources/educationreform.html


Counties where adults discuss global warming at least occasionally (green is less, purple is more)...

How Americans Think About Climate Change, in Six Maps https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/21/climate/how-americans-think-about-climate-change-in-six-maps.html

.

 

.
Here's another Regular American™ opinion study with odd (?) or Exceptional™ results...

The bar is numbered 0% to 100%, blue is 'disagree' and red is 'agree'.

The left hand map shows opinions about

The majority agrees.

The right hand map shows opinions about

The majority disagrees.

How Americans Think About Climate Change, in Six Maps https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/21/climate/how-americans-think-about-climate-change-in-six-maps.html

It may be a problem that whistling past the graveyard is not an actual or viable solution.

Could the answer be that people know Anthropological Global Warming (AGW) is true and we subconsciously realize we are truly, truly *̶*̶*̶*̶*̶*̶ ruint, BUT, since we're only truly, truly *̶*̶*̶*̶*̶*̶ ruint in the future.....and........we'll all be dead then, so...........?

That seems so adverse to the "Think of the children" and "The children must be protected" and the "etc, etc, etc" mantra that is so pervasive nowadays.

If this AGW stuff is not actually an economical hoax, which it isn't, don't you deniers worry you'll be called out at the Pearly Gates for moral failure?
.

 

Tornadoes in the South and North a few weeks before Christmas...?
Wait, what? That sounds a little odd.

 

“There are basically two choices. We’re going to massively change everything we are doing on this planet, the way we work together, the actions we take, the way we run our economy, and the way we behave towards each other and towards the planet and towards everything that lives on this planet. Or we sit back and relax and we just let the whole thing crash. The choice is so easy to make, even if you don’t care at all about nature or the lives of other people. Even if you just look at your own interests and look purely through an economical angle, it is just a good return on investment to take good care of this planet.” – Alexander Verbeek

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Yale Professor William Nordhaus a few months ago. He has a lot of influence on those who decide things for us. He is very knowledgeable in both climate change science and economics.
He propounds things like, since agriculture, forestry and fisheries are only 3-4% of the international GDP, even if the entire global agricultural system were to collapse in the future, the costs, in terms of world GDP, would be minimal.
And that in the future there will be much more money, so it will be much easier to deal with the costs of climate change in the future.


The Nobel Prize for Climate Catastrophe
The economist William Nordhaus will receive his profession’s highest honor for research on global warming that’s been hugely influential—and entirely misguided.
The Nobel Prize for Climate Catastrophe https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/06/the-nobel-prize-for-climate-catastrophe/

 

Interesting article. Thanks for posting.

 

The Vanishing
Tomgram: Subhankar Banerjee, The Vanishing | TomDispatch http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176506/