Hold the phone everyone Things they are a changen Page.5

[eamarquardt]

There is precious little that man can do to the environment that the earth won't correct for given time. Whether or not it affects us, in the mean time, is another issue entirely.

I strongly but respectfully disagree the the statement above.

I agree that "Mother Nature" has a considerable ability to right the wrongs done to her. DDT. The fact that the Gulf Oil spill allowed for the discovery that microbes can do a pretty good job of eating oil:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... slide-show

However, there are many things that don't degrade over time. Heavy metals, being elements, don't degrade. In fact, some of them become more toxic as they react in nature. Methyl Mercury for example.

"Lies, damn lies, and statistics" Sam

The number of trees is simply not an effective measure of what we're doing to the planet. Been to Chernobyl lately. There are plenty of Love Canals around the world. Burning coal w/o scrubbers releases a lot of mercury into the air (it ha been said that forest fires release more mercury but in fact the Mercury released from the Forest Fires is Mercury the forest has picked up from soot from the coal burning generating plants).

It's a theory, at least. Mercury naturally exists in various levels around the planet. You cannot spot test after the fact and then assert that a higher occurrence of something is evidence of anything.

The researchers at the U of M disagree with you. They can tell you which coal burning plant the mercury came from!

http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/20118- ... ower-plant

Which relates directly to this...

It appears that fracking may be polluting ground water:

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/e ... -chemicals

We've seen a LOT of these reports here in PA, where natural gas fracking has become a major issue.

I've spoken with a number of individuals who belong to various enviro-activisim groups.. desperately opposed to fracking. In fact, a number of them belong to my church. They maintain the same thing.

Ask them to quantify the assertion, however, and you get some interesting responses.

Never mind the fact that there are, last I heard, no reported cases here in the U.S. of chemicals in the ground water being above hazardous levels. In those areas where the chemical levels are above "normal," if you ask them what the levels were in those areas before fracking, they'll tell you that they have no clue.

In short, if you press them hard enough you'll quickly come to the conclusion that there's absolutely no evidence to support their theory that fracking, done properly, is hazardous to water or the environment. And, I've had more than one admit that.

Coral reefs are being poisoned by runoff laced with fertilizers, industrial pollution, and human waste.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/09/ ... 1G20080930

I might actually believe this. Although, I'd be curious how much of that comes from the U.S. vs. what comes from Mexico. Does it matter? The reef is just as dead either way.

Although I agree the current global warming trend may or may not be part of a natural cycle of the sun's output, we're really screwing up this planet in ways other than by burning coal and petroleum.

Well, to date, there has never been a climate change model that's been accurate beyond about 5 years out.

In contrast, compare the temperature changes of the planet with the solar cycles and they line up almost exactly.

As an aside, the planet, as a whole, isn't warming. It hasn't been for about 15 years.

We implemented satellite temperature monitoring decades ago. They chose to ignore those readings when it became apparent that the warming trend was going to be short lived.

They reverted back to the earth based monitors, then promptly reduced the number of active monitors from several hundred to about 50.

Any guesses on where the ones they eliminated were?

I don't think I'm a Chicken Little but I do think there are more than a few Ostriches out there.

By the way, #1 son is a petroleum engineer on the central California coast and #2 son is finishing with CC (after "visiting" Iraq at considerable government expense) and has applied to 3 engineering schools with programs in petroleum engineering and one mech eng school.

Sounds like a couple of hard working boys you have there. They continue to be "works in progress". Thanks.

Good job.

You don't tug on Superman's cape.
You don't spit into the wind.
You don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger.
And you don't mess around with Jim.

This is the only planet that we know of that will support us. Even if we were aware of another one, we all couldn't get there (if any of us could).

So, we had better be nice to "Mother Nature" and error to the side of caution until we understand the consequences of what we are doing to the planet.

Gus

[jstrubberg]

Well, the first step to understanding is admitting you don't know what's going on in the first place.

Something the "green movement" seems to have a problem with.

[TJinPgh]

I strongly but respectfully disagree the the statement above.

I agree that "Mother Nature" has a considerable ability to right the wrongs done to her. DDT. The fact that the Gulf Oil spill allowed for the discovery that microbes can do a pretty good job of eating oil:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... slide-show

The effects of DDT have been grossly exaggerated. Frankly, we did more damage, both to man and the water tables, by banning it.

However, there are many things that don't degrade over time. Heavy metals, being elements, don't degrade. In fact, some of them become more toxic as they react in nature. Methyl Mercury for example.

Toxic to us, not the planet. The planet co-existed with all of those things long before we got here and will co-exist long after we're gone.

The researchers at the U of M disagree with you. They can tell you which coal burning plant the mercury came from!

http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/20118- ... ower-plant[/quote]

U-M Sustainability...

Realizing that the entire concept of sustainable development (which is nothing more than code for globalized socialism) involves banning the usage of any and all natural resources.

Would be curious to see who's funding them. I suspect you'll find a conflict of interests in there somewhere.

Does it matter? The reef is just as dead either way.

Yes.

Nobody is debating that society should employ measures to protect the environment.

It becomes a question of how much is necessary.

Mexico does virtually nothing with respect to environmental protection. The U.S. already does a significant amount.

We can debate whether or not it's enough. But, unless you can determine the primary culprit of the problem, it's impossible to determine what measures need to be taken.

This is the only planet that we know of that will support us. Even if we were aware of another one, we all couldn't get there (if any of us could).

So, we had better be nice to "Mother Nature" and error to the side of caution until we understand the consequences of what we are doing to the planet.

Gus[/color]

Not arguing any of that. Simply suggesting that we are being "nice to Mother Nature" for our sake, not the planet's. The planet will survive just fine no matter what we do to it.

Further, I believe that the fear mongering from the left is grossly exaggerated.

That, in no way, suggests we should ignore the issue. Simply suggesting that we don't need to employ draconian measures to address the issues that do exist.

Expecially when the measures suggested are designed more to effect global ECONOMIC change rather than global ENVIRONMENTAL change.

[eamarquardt]

My point with DDT was that here, it nearly drove a subspecies of eagle to extinction. After we stopped using DDT the birds have made a comeback. DDT degrades over time and the Santa Monica bay is getting better. I've heard that by banning DDT a lot of folks have died that otherwise would have survived. The earth can heal to some extent depending on what we've done to it. Some things, like heavy metals, will be with us a long time and will be difficult to re mediate.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the planet will survive even we don't. Don't you want an environment that will support your particular form of life?

I'm not sure where you live but I was raised in the San Fernando Valley in the 50s, 60's, and left in the mid 70s. The air was so toxic then that at the end of the day you couldn't take a deep breath as if felt as though someone was standing on your chest. There is no doubt in my mind that people died because of the air pollution here.

My "Be kind to Mother Nature" is simply a euphemism. The evidence, in some aspects, that we are destroying our environment, and we're gonna all get "Darwin Awards" if we don't clean up our act. Our depending upon industrial technologies and the attendant pollution is accelerating around the world and there is no doubt that we are making some places uninhabitable.

Gus, out

[TJinPgh]

My point with DDT was that here, it nearly drove a subspecies of eagle to extinction. After we stopped using DDT the birds have made a comeback.

You do realize that the National Wildlife Federation (a pretty reputable organization, I'd say) debunked this theory over 25 years ago, right?

The assertion was based on one or two studies done that suggested that DDT was responsible for thinning shell walls of their eggs.

The NWF published articles back in 1984 of several studies done on the matter after the ban. It was determined that the eagles used in the original studies were fed low calcium diets along with a wide variety other substances that were already known to have the thinning effect. In addition to volumes of DDT that were far and above anything they came in contact with naturally.

In short, the DDT didn't do it.

DDT degrades over time and the Santa Monica bay is getting better.

Now, don't misunderstand the comment. Pollution may well have been a factor in the thinning eggs. And dealing with the pollution levels there may well have had a positive impact.

However, the studies also indicated that other factors contributed to the egg thinning. Things that, yes, man was largely responsible for but not necessarily environmental in nature.

The comeback of a protected species can just as easily be attributed to natural selection. The eagles that remained were the ones not affected by such issues.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the planet will survive even we don't. Don't you want an environment that will support your particular form of life?

Of course. I'm simply making a distinction. People keep asserting that we are destroying the planet. Man is not utilizing anything on this planet that did not come from this planet in one form or another.

There is no method by which man could destroy itself on this planet that would render the planet incapable of supporting some other form of life.

We may well be destroying ourselves. We're not destroying the planet.

I'm not sure where you live but I was raised in the San Fernando Valley in the 50s, 60's, and left in the mid 70s. The air was so toxic then that at the end of the day you couldn't take a deep breath as if felt as though someone was standing on your chest. There is no doubt in my mind that people died because of the air pollution here.

I've lived in the Pittsburgh region my whole life. Nearly as long as you, but not quite.

I lived through the era where Pittsburgh was considered the belt buckle of the steel belt. The town I grew up in was NAMED for the steel company that practically built it.

Go back and look at pictures of Pittsburgh from the 60s and 70s. Trust me, I understand the concept of man-made air pollution.

However, I also understand the concept of fear mongering.

It's been nearly 30 years since the steel mills closed in this region. Contrary to popular media assertion, our region STILL hasn't recovered from the economic impact. Seems that people on welfare aren't counted when discussing unemployment numbers.

The air has substantially improved. The effects of the steel mills has long since passed.

Yet, study after study indicates that our air quality remains among the worst in the nation.

Today, they have a new boogey man to blame. Electric power plants.

Sounds like a good explanation, doesn't it?

One small problem.

If you examine the environmental maps, showing where the largest concentrations of "pollutants" are, they're in the regions where there are either no or the fewest power plants.

Wanna know what there is an abundance of in those regions?

Some of the largest concentrations of trees that have been proven to actually emit the same kinds of pollutants.

Yes, some varieties of trees actually emit pollution naturally. And we apparently have more than our fair share of them.

A certain president commented on that theory about a decade before it was proven accurate. They called him a nut.

Despite all of this, we still have the EPA breathing down our collective necks, demanding that every form of manufacturing and energy production somehow compensate for what mother nature chooses not to.

My point here?

That not all pollution is man-made. More than a little of it occurs on it's own.

Man should do it's best to insure that our own, personal impact on the things that affect man and wildlife on this planet are kept to a minimum.

We should also, however, realize that you can take a good idea and turn it into a bad one by taking it to unreasonable levels.

And, until we recognize that the agenda of most environmental prevention isn't to protect the environment but rather to affect economic "sustainability," then it's impossible to determine where that level of reason lies.

The next time you see the word "sustainable" in the title of something environmental, do a little google search for The U.N. Agenda 21.

Then ask yourself if the sources we're relying on for information in these types of discussions might just happen to have an alternative agenda.

[jstrubberg]

You know what the most irritating thing is about modern day discussions about environmentalism?

The boogeyman of CO2 has completely halted any discussion, funding or progress on pollution issues. What a crock. It's junk science used to fearmonger trillions of dollars out of folks pockets.

Air pollution, water pollution, our waste stream, that's the stuff we need to be working on. Instead we waste all our time and energy worrying about an inert gas that is projected to change our climate by a whopping 2 degrees centigrade over the next few hundred years. The shift isn't even discernable against the normal background shift from axial tilt changes!

Biggest PR boondoggle ever, and an insult to folks actually concerned about the natural world around them.

[Forrest747]

i recall mt pinatubo erupting spewing how much CO2 in teh air and actually cooled the earth by a degree or two. the sun and volcanoes have more to do with climate change than does CO2 emissions.

April 5–April 12, 1815 – Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies blows its top explosively during an eruption, killing upwards of 92,000 and propelling thousands of tons of aerosols (Sulfide gas compounds) into the upper atmosphere (stratosphere). The following year (1816) becomes known as "Year Without a Summer", as the high level gases reflect sunlight and cause the widespread cooling (known as a volcanic winter) and heavy rains, snows in June and July in the northern hemisphere, and widespread crop failures.

[eamarquardt]

Well, the first step to understanding is admitting you don't know what's going on in the first place.

Something the "green movement" seems to have a problem with.

To a certain extent, yes. "Chicken Littles". There are those, though, of the other persuasion. "Ostriches".

In some instances, IMHO global warming, we don't know the primary root cause at this time. There is no doubt though what happened at Love Canal, the Santa Susanna Nuclear Laboratory (pretty close to my home), all of the Superfund Sites, Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi, and a host of other sites.

If one extrapolates the damage done in just the last century and a half to our planet by man, the fact that industrialization is encircling the globe, the outcome, if we don't change our ways, seems certain.

And if we don't do ourselves in the sun is gonna become a red giant, swallow the earth, and then burn out.

Cheers,

Gus

[jstrubberg]

Really? When Mt. St. Helens blew, it put out more CO2 in two days than every car in the US will produce in the next 142 years. Projections still show a warming trend that is way inside what we should be seeing anyway from axial tilt. In other words, we have absolutely no idea if we are causing long term change or not.


The problem is, we are trying to claim a problem when we have no baseline for comparison. In engineering, that's called a WAG. Look at the mess that is Yellowstone if you want to see where a WAG gets you with environmental issues.

Pollution is another matter entirely and, IMHO, where we should be focussing.

[TJinPgh]

The problem, Gus, is that the earth has seen far worse conditions than it's seeing now. And it saw them long before man became industrialized.

What we're doing to the earth isn't even a blip on the radar to what this planet has gone through.

It's still here.

There is an extreme arrogance that seems to go along with being at the top of the food chain.

And, make no mistake... that's ALL we are. At the top of earth's food chain.

All those sites you mentioned? Life continues.

Maybe not human life. But life, none the less. We took what we learned from those incidents and made the process better.

There is no process by which human beings can survive that doesn't involve altering this planet in one way or another.

None.

We are not created of sturdy enough stuff to survive the harshest climates on earth without some form of energy. And there aren't enough temperate regions to even begin to house the earth's population to allow us to do without it.

So you either accept that and do what you reasonably do to minimize our risk to each other or you just toss in the towel and ask man to head for the nearest cliff and jump off.

Me? I go with the former and acknowledge that sooner or later, this planet will become uninhabitable to man no matter what we do.

We will either render it uninhabitable or the universe will.

If it's the former, then we'll die off and the earth will reclaim itself for the next species that comes along.

If it's the latter, then the earth will cease to exist and we'll die off anyway.

Neither is in danger of happening within the next million or so years. If we're lucky, there's some diety out there that will resolve the issue long before then.

So just do what you can and recognize anything else for what it is.

A global transfer of wealth.