Environmental Activism? Wilderness Concerns?

[Thomas Linton]

. . .
Also. 1000 acres a day? do you know how many men and machines it would take to cut down 1000 acres of thick south american jungle in a day? Always question statistics that Political groups throw out for uninformed public consumption. Demand that they prove it. If the rain forrests were being lost by 1000 acres a day, it would have all been gone by now, or close to it.
. . .

After two hours on the Internet, the LOW estimate is 6,700 acres a day in the Amazon basin alone (365 days a year; 2,471,000 acres per year) and the high estimate is 20,000 acres a day in the Amazon alone (365 days a year).

There WAS a lot of rain forest in S. America and Asia. There still is a large remnant. It will be gone in your clildren's lifetimes at the LOW estimated rates with virtually all of the vegitation turned into waste heat and carbon in the atmosphere.

Uncomfortable facts are no less facts.

If you have a "more reliable" figure, let's hear it by all means.

And what they get for their labor is basically gone in 2-3 years. Then on to the next patch of forest.

(Never kill alla' those Passenger Pigeons. I mean, they come in clouds that blot out the sun. Do you know how many hunters it would take shootin' how many a day? Silly to even think there's a threat to that species.)

 

[ranger88]

I guess if you have 6700 crews clearing 1 acre a day, or one crew of 6700 clearing 6700 acres a day. It could work. or I could be full of bologna. I don't know, I don't live in South America, but maybe when every from down there migrates up here. we can move down there and do something about it. What do you think?

 

[beezaur]

Information like acres per day, etc. really needs the source cited. So many of the arguments about the environment are muddied by bad methods, poor understandings, and just plain lies, that all sources need to be scrutinized. Not saying numbers cited above are wrong, but in a sea of misinformation, facts need to be kept as reliable as possible.

Scott

 

[Thomas Linton]

If you have a "more reliable" figure, let's hear it by all means.

The sources were a range of govenmental and non-govenrmental organizations. Some just report. Others view with alarm.

Note that they did not agree on the figure -- so I gave the high and the low that I found. I guess you can look your "ownself" and make up your own mind, but not wanting to believe there is a problem won't make it go away.

Pretty clearly, man is not "the" cause of global warming -- maybe not even a significant cause. One site said 75% of all measured increase in annual temperature was recorded before 1800, so that's not SUV's. It's been going on since the last Ice Age. But punching more "holes" in a sinking ship is also not much of a solution. Within reason, it might be better to bail.

 

[beezaur]

Pretty clearly, man is not "the" cause of global warming -- maybe not even a significant cause. . .

I have about a 10-year stack of The Journal of Geophysical Research, Science, and various accessory publications full of original research by prominent scientists that pretty strongly disagrees with that. I think you can go to Science's site -- www.sciencemag.org -- and view a lot of the older articles even without a subscription. At the very least you can read the abstracts.

However, if you do read the actual research reports you will promptly find out why there is so much dispute about the meaning of the research:

High-resolution carbon isotope measurements of multiple stratigraphic sections in south China demonstrate that the pronounced carbon isotopic excursion at the Permian-Triassic boundary was not an isolated event but the first in a series of large fluctuations that continued throughout the Early Triassic before ending abruptly early in the Middle Triassic. The unusual behavior of the carbon cycle coincides with the delayed recovery from end-Permian extinction recorded by fossils, suggesting a direct relationship between Earth system function and biological rediversification in the aftermath of Earth's most devastating mass extinction.

Huh?

A lot of people will vaguely recognize "Triassic" as part of the "Age of Dinosaurs, but they will have no idea what the above abstract means, let alone be able to wade through the article itself, nor especially be able to apply it to carbon cycle-related interpretations. Lots of journalists who report on results published in articles like these get an awful lot of it wrong.

Incidentally, it is also very easy for a quack to throw out a lot of those $0.50 words and be taken seriously. Politically-rooted "researchers" from both sides have taken advantage of that fact, and have obfuscated the situation thoroughly.

Scott

 

[Thomas Linton]

I have about a 10-year stack of The Journal of Geophysical Research, Science, and various accessory publications full of original research by prominent scientists that pretty strongly disagrees with that. I think you can go to Science's site -- www.sciencemag.org -- and view a lot of the older articles even without a subscription. At the very least you can read the abstracts.
Scott

Scott, I can accept we're making it worse and even the possibility that we can make it better - or less bad. However, with due respect to your reading of those journals, the notion that man caused the end of the Ice Age and the warming trend that has continued for thousands of years up to today is "Hokum" (Holistically Outlandish & Karmicly Unbelieveable Moosepoop).

The 80% before the Industrial Age comes from Richard Goddard, a member of the American Meterological Society, and he thinks that might be way low overall since records were not being kept or are not available for the period 13,000 years ago (not even on Google).

 

[beezaur]

I don't think anyone is claiming post-ice age warming is anthropogenic.

The modeling that is done now neatly traces post-glacial warming, matches known human emissions, and even predicts the effects of volcanic eruptions remarkably well. The claims that are made by scientists are basically that man's effect is superimposed on other natural effects. Much work has been put into separating the two and resolving the effect of each. It isn't a matter of running a mathematical model and getting it to match weather records. There is a vast and deep body of physics that has been developed which is based on observation.

Anyway, I still see the environmentalists as being wrong. They aren't wrong because of the facts of the science (those I believe to be true). They are wrong because they are essentially willing to strangle their own kind for the sake of organisms which are being fairly outcompeted; there ain't enough room on this ball for all of us.

Say you have a fleet of taxis and the model of car used might be a lemon. If you are the businessman deciding what to do about it you need advice from two sides. It is a mechanical problem, so you need the advice of a good mechanic. But it is also an economic problem, so you need to talk to your accountant as well.

The republicans are paying attention only to the accountants, claim there is no mechanical issue. They ignore the mechanic at their peril.

The democrats are only interested in the machanic. They propose solutions which are not feasible.

If you are going to keep your taxi company running (a healthy society in a healthy environment) you need both the mechanic (science) and the accountant (industry).

You can forget about that and only pay attention to one or the other. But if you do you will soon be speaking Chinese, and will be right back where you started with respect to the environment.

Or so goes my opinion on the matter.

Scott

 

[ranger88]

Sorry to change the subject fellows, but did anyone watch the program a few nights ago, (i think it was on the discovery channel) about the super volcano at yellowstone park. This worries me more that the other things we've talked about on this thread. from what they were saying, it doesn't look good. The magma is close to the surface to the point that the land is becoming deformed. it makes me really want to tighten up my survival skills.

 

[Codger_64]

Made for a good show?

Eruptions of the Yellowstone volcanic system have included the two largest volcanic eruptions in North America in the past few million years; the third largest was at Long Valley in California and produced the Bishop ash bed. The biggest of the Yellowstone eruptions occurred 2.1 million years ago, depositing the Huckleberry Ridge ash bed. These eruptions left behind huge volcanic depressions called “calderas” and spread volcanic ash over large parts of North America (see map). If another large caldera-forming eruption were to occur at Yellowstone, its effects would be worldwide. Thick ash deposits would bury vast areas of the United States, and injection of huge volumes of volcanic gases into the atmosphere could drastically affect global climate. Fortunately, the Yellowstone volcanic system shows no signs that it is headed toward such an eruption in the near future. In fact, the probability of any such event occurring at Yellowstone within the next few thousand years is exceedingly low.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3024

The term "supervolcano" has no specifically defined scientific meaning. It was used by the producers of The BBC TV show Horizion in 2000 to refer to volcanoes that have generated Earth's largest volcanic eruptions. As such, a supervolcano would be one that has produced an exceedingly large, catastrophic explosive eruption and a giant caldera.


http://www.solcomhouse.com/yellowstone.htm

 

[hollowdweller]

The democrats are only interested in the machanic. They propose solutions which are not feasible.
Scott

I disagree, conservation incentives like increasing the miles per gallon of cars, increased funding for public transportation, and tax breaks for home insulation and research into alternative fuels is totally feasible.

*If we could either add a tax to vehicles that consume over a certain amount of fuel or provide a tax rebate for purchase of vehicles that are extremely fuel efficient this would go a long way. I think cars are near the top if not THE biggest contributors to greehouse gas.

*If we took a lot of the tax breaks we give to oil and gas companies for exploration and made them pay the fair market value of oil and gas leases they have on public land, and then used the money to invest in more public transportation that would help a lot.

*Burning coal and oil for heat and electricity are a big source of greenhouse gas. While it is unrealistic to think that we can move away from doing this in the short run, it is entirely realistic that we could provide tax incentives for people to put in solar or wind home systems to reduce their electric consumption and also incentives to encourage insulation, new doors, windows etc.

I saw Howard Dean give a speech recently where he said that in Vermont that they had a program to help pay for low income folks's heat in the winter. With the rising energy costs that this was costing the state some money. But they developed incentives to help a lot of these people, living in old houses to insulate. He said that while this cost some up front that in the long run, that the state saved a bunch of money in heating bills, and it also stimulated the economy because a bunch of contractors had work.

A lot of stuff we can do is not that far out. It's just simple stuff. The problem is the guys are lining the pockets of senators and from whose ranks the top 2 guys came from are calling the shots.:thumbdn:

 

[rdelliott]

Say you have a fleet of taxis and the model of car used might be a lemon. If you are the businessman deciding what to do about it you need advice from two sides. It is a mechanical problem, so you need the advice of a good mechanic. But it is also an economic problem, so you need to talk to your accountant as well.

The republicans are paying attention only to the accountants, claim there is no mechanical issue. They ignore the mechanic at their peril.

The democrats are only interested in the machanic. They propose solutions which are not feasible.

If you are going to keep your taxi company running (a healthy society in a healthy environment) you need both the mechanic (science) and the accountant (industry).

You can forget about that and only pay attention to one or the other. But if you do you will soon be speaking Chinese, and will be right back where you started with respect to the environment.

Or so goes my opinion on the matter.

Scott

Hi Beezaur: to perfect your analogy, there has to be only the one car in existence, and once it's worn out, the taxi company can't buy another.

Under those circumstances, I think it makes much more sense to pay real serious attention to the mechanic, and fire the accountants if they can't grasp the commercial realities of the situation.

 

[Thomas Linton]

Hi Beezaur: to perfect your analogy, there has to be only the one car in existence, and once it's worn out, the taxi company can't buy another.

Under those circumstances, I think it makes much more sense to pay real serious attention to the mechanic, and fire the accountants if they can't grasp the commercial realities of the situation.

Which would be a fine analogy -- if the taxi was the only way to accomplish the presumed critical function. Your analogy assumes facts not in evidence.

More importantly, who would ever let accountants run a business? Bean counters, knowing how to neither make nor sell, have destroyed more businesses than idiot/lazy offspring.

 

[rdelliott]

Which would be a fine analogy -- if the taxi was the only way to accomplish the presumed critical function. Your analogy assumes facts not in evidence.

More importantly, who would ever let accountants run a business? Bean counters, knowing how to neither make nor sell, have destroyed more businesses than idiot/lazy offspring.

I was assuming that nn beezaur's analogy, the taxi=the planetary ecosystem. We only have one of those. If taxi=fossil fuel technology, then yes, there may be alternatives.

And don't get me started about accountants. I have horror stories about Sarbanes-Oxley compliance that would chill your blood. I quote:

Me: "Well, unfortunately the agreement has already been signed."
Accountant: "Well, can we go back to the customer and renegotiate this?"
Me: *head explodes*

 

[ranger88]

The term "supervolcano" has no specifically defined scientific meaning. It was used by the producers of The BBC TV show Horizion in 2000 to refer to volcanoes that have generated Earth's largest volcanic eruptions. As such, a supervolcano would be one that has produced an exceedingly large, catastrophic explosive eruption and a giant caldera.


I didn't see the BBC program. I've just heard the term "supervolcano" used on various shows on the science channel, and discovery, etc. maybe the word super is used in reference size of the Magma chamber, and the caldera.