there are no cages but the ones we allow...
Sam
Environmental Crisis: The Sky is Falling!
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cowboyangel
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Apollonaris Zeus
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you know, I was going to let this go, since RG seemed so completely locked into the CATO Institute view of the world that discussion seemed pointless, but this article screamed to be posted. BTW, it was just on a sidebar of AP stories and on no front page I've seen anywhere, so that "Fearmongering to sell papers" argument goes nowhere. Also please note the first hand accounts of what's happening, not just scientists theorizing.
Climate change rises on global agenda
May 24, 2004 | FUNAFUTI, Tuvalu (AP) -- The rising sea is eating at the shores of low-slung Funafuti, a spit of coral and coconut palms in the remote Pacific. Unseen fingers of ocean even reach beneath the sands, surfacing inland in startling places, among nervous islanders.
"It used to be puddles. Now it's like lakes," said Hilia Vavae, local meteorologist.
Far to the north in the Marshall Islands, 1,250 miles away, trees are toppling before aquamarine waves. Watching, perplexed, from the edge of a lagoon, teenager Ankit Stephen asked a visitor, "Why is this happening?"
Six hundred miles west, on tiny Kosrae, Alokoa Talley pondered the same question. Neighbors are moving their homes up the lush slopes, away from the encroaching Pacific. "I don't know," the government worker said, "but I think it's because of `green' something."
The "greenhouse effect," climate change, has languished on the world's agenda since the 1970s, a seemingly distant threat. But year by year, inch by inch, it is rising to the top -- as ocean islets flood, glaciers retreat, Arctic permafrost melts, and leading voices raise new alarms.
"We may already be seeing -- in the increased incidence of drought, floods and extreme weather events that many regions are experiencing -- some of the devastation that lies ahead," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in March, when he urged all governments to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to reduce the world's "greenhouse gas" emissions.
That long-stalled 1997 accord is opposed in Washington, where U.S. government and industry object that emission controls would handicap the U.S. economy. Now only ratification by Russia can revive it, making this a critical year on the political front in a long, difficult debate over what to do about climate change.
On the scientific front, meanwhile, signs of global warming mount.
Like the glass of a greenhouse, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and some other gases in the atmosphere let sunlight in but tend to warm the Earth by trapping heat it emits back toward space. That's scientific fact; the scientific puzzle involves other factors that might lessen -- or worsen -- the warming and what it does to the planet.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fossil fuels burned in everything from automobiles to electricity plants, reached record levels in the atmosphere this past winter, a Hawaii observatory reported in March.
Then, in April, other U.S. scientists reported NASA satellite readings showed an average increase in the globe's land surface temperatures of 0.77 degrees Fahrenheit between 1981 and 1998. This reinforced earlier findings, from ground stations, that global temperatures rose 1 degree over the 20th century.
These rising curves, of greenhouse gas and global temperature, parallel the analysis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-organized network of hundreds of climatologists and other scientists worldwide.
In a pivotal 2001 report, the IPCC listed as a key finding: "Most of observed warming over last 50 years likely due to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities."
If emissions are brought under control too slowly, temperatures could rise an additional 10.4 degrees by the year 2100, the IPCC said. Even with quick rollbacks in smokestack, tailpipe and other emissions, temperatures could rise 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, the scientists said.
Warming is expected to be unevenly distributed and to change regional climates in powerful ways, shifting climate zones hundreds of miles, possibly making farmlands drier, deserts wetter; melting ice caps; intensifying storms; spreading diseases to new areas; and raising ocean levels -- by anywhere from 3.5 inches to almost 3 feet by 2100, depending on emission controls, the IPCC said.
The seas would rise because water expands as it warms, and because of the runoff of ice melt from the continents.
In fact, the oceans have expanded, rising an average 1 to 2 millimeters a year -- up to one inch every 12 years -- during the 20th century, as measured by tide gauges.
More recently, satellites show "the rise has been highly accelerated," to 3 millimeters a year, said Walter Munk of San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Pacific islanders aren't alone. Rising seas are a growing threat from Alaska, where Eskimos are relocating an Arctic island village, to New Orleans and to Shanghai, China -- near-coastal cities already below sea level, sinking on their own, and further endangered by expanding oceans.
Prevailing winds, tidal peculiarities and other factors can make sea levels vary from place to place. Here at Funafuti, capital of a mini-nation midway between Hawaii and Australia, the gauges have shown the sea rising 5 to 6 millimeters a year since 1993, meteorologist Vavae said.
But some islands also are subsiding, sinking under their own weight. "In many islands, I think the answer is that both are happening -- subsidence and rising levels," said University of Hawaii oceanographer Roger Lukas.
Similarly uncertain: What will a swelling ocean do to a Funafuti?
One rule of thumb, disputed among specialists, holds that each millimeter rise in sea level can claim 1.5 meters -- 5 feet -- of shallow ocean beach. Some theorize, however, that a moderately higher Pacific would "rearrange," but not obliterate, an atoll like Funafuti -- a ring of islands around a central lagoon.
Rearrangement would be bad enough for Lototele Malie, 75, whose pastel-blue concrete house, with 15 adults and children inside, sits at the edge of Funafuti's dwindling ocean beach.
"A month ago the tide came right here," the sarong-clad old man said, pointing 3 feet away to the lip of his concrete-slab patio. "It's getting dangerous," he said, with the thunder of waves as a backdrop.
The Malies and others along Funafuti's fringe have little room to maneuver. Just 300 yards from their rear doors, the choppy waters of the 9-mile-wide lagoon are rising. In between sit other salt-caked plywood or cinderblock houses, beside gaping pits dug in the island's coral foundation long ago, by U.S. troops in World War II.
Those pits, filling now with seeping seawater, supplied the crushed material for Funafuti's airport, where today some of Vavae's "lakes" have begun to appear at peak tides.
"People got especially worried when the runway flooded. That's new," Margaret Bita, 45, told a visiting reporter after Sunday church services.
The church and little airport lie on the broadest part -- 600 yards across -- of slender, steamy, 7-mile-long Funafuti, home to about half the 11,000 people of Tuvalu, an impoverished nation getting by on fees from foreign fishing fleets, international aid and money sent home by Tuvaluan merchant seamen.
This main island narrows elsewhere to a mere 50 yards of sand, swaying palms and roadway between lagoon and sea. Its elevation is seldom more than a few feet. When February's "king" tides washed out a small causeway, children swam to school.
"I think it would be better if my kids were somewhere else," said hospital worker Beia Fetau, 40, preparing to help with Sunday school in shirt, tie and traditional male "sulu," or skirt.
As recently as the 1980s, Vavae said, the peak king tides came only in January and February. Now, she said, they crash ashore from September to May. But it's the quiet seepage from below that most alarms Tuvaluans.
Because of intruding saltwater, many have abandoned their gardens of deep-rooted "pulaka," a tuber crop grown in pits here for centuries. On the nearby islet of Vasafua, the coconut trees are dying. Another small uninhabited island, Tepuka Savilivili, has vanished beneath the waves.
"It went under water in the cyclone in 1997," Vavae said.
Disentangling long-term climate change from short-term natural variability is a challenge at the local level, especially in the Pacific, where the periodic climatic phenomenon El Nino raises and lowers ocean levels, causes droughts and stirs up severe storms. But people across the Pacific feel sure something unusual is happening.
In Kiribati, another mini-state north of Tuvalu, they've also lost an islet in the main atoll of Tarawa. On Majuro, the Marshalls' capital, the lagoon outside Ankit Stephen's home has undercut dozens of towering coconut palms, as islanders futilely try to stop the waves with piles of debris.
On Kosrae, a "high island" of volcanic peaks in the Federated States of Micronesia, the people have always lived along a flat coastal strip, but some are now dismantling their simple homes and heading for the hills, as recommended by the government.
"Nobody remembers such tides before. The sea is actually moving inland," said Simpson Abraham, head of Kosrae's Resources Development Authority. Some offshore islets have vanished, he said.
Here in Tuvalu, devoutly Christian since missionary days, many talk not of greenhouses, but of Genesis, reminding each other of God's promise to Noah: As long as rainbows cross the sky, there will be no more great floods. "God will protect us," one woman churchgoer assured a visitor.
Saufatu Sopoanga, as Tuvalu's prime minister, must look into the future, not the Bible. He is talking to New Zealand about a kind of 21st century Noah's ark -- a standby plan for a mass migration there.
"In 50 or 100 years, the islands are expected to go under water. What can we do?" Tuvalu's leader asked, on a day when a tropical morning downpour soon gave way to a rainbow in a blue, very warm sky.
Climate change rises on global agenda
May 24, 2004 | FUNAFUTI, Tuvalu (AP) -- The rising sea is eating at the shores of low-slung Funafuti, a spit of coral and coconut palms in the remote Pacific. Unseen fingers of ocean even reach beneath the sands, surfacing inland in startling places, among nervous islanders.
"It used to be puddles. Now it's like lakes," said Hilia Vavae, local meteorologist.
Far to the north in the Marshall Islands, 1,250 miles away, trees are toppling before aquamarine waves. Watching, perplexed, from the edge of a lagoon, teenager Ankit Stephen asked a visitor, "Why is this happening?"
Six hundred miles west, on tiny Kosrae, Alokoa Talley pondered the same question. Neighbors are moving their homes up the lush slopes, away from the encroaching Pacific. "I don't know," the government worker said, "but I think it's because of `green' something."
The "greenhouse effect," climate change, has languished on the world's agenda since the 1970s, a seemingly distant threat. But year by year, inch by inch, it is rising to the top -- as ocean islets flood, glaciers retreat, Arctic permafrost melts, and leading voices raise new alarms.
"We may already be seeing -- in the increased incidence of drought, floods and extreme weather events that many regions are experiencing -- some of the devastation that lies ahead," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in March, when he urged all governments to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to reduce the world's "greenhouse gas" emissions.
That long-stalled 1997 accord is opposed in Washington, where U.S. government and industry object that emission controls would handicap the U.S. economy. Now only ratification by Russia can revive it, making this a critical year on the political front in a long, difficult debate over what to do about climate change.
On the scientific front, meanwhile, signs of global warming mount.
Like the glass of a greenhouse, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and some other gases in the atmosphere let sunlight in but tend to warm the Earth by trapping heat it emits back toward space. That's scientific fact; the scientific puzzle involves other factors that might lessen -- or worsen -- the warming and what it does to the planet.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fossil fuels burned in everything from automobiles to electricity plants, reached record levels in the atmosphere this past winter, a Hawaii observatory reported in March.
Then, in April, other U.S. scientists reported NASA satellite readings showed an average increase in the globe's land surface temperatures of 0.77 degrees Fahrenheit between 1981 and 1998. This reinforced earlier findings, from ground stations, that global temperatures rose 1 degree over the 20th century.
These rising curves, of greenhouse gas and global temperature, parallel the analysis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-organized network of hundreds of climatologists and other scientists worldwide.
In a pivotal 2001 report, the IPCC listed as a key finding: "Most of observed warming over last 50 years likely due to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities."
If emissions are brought under control too slowly, temperatures could rise an additional 10.4 degrees by the year 2100, the IPCC said. Even with quick rollbacks in smokestack, tailpipe and other emissions, temperatures could rise 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, the scientists said.
Warming is expected to be unevenly distributed and to change regional climates in powerful ways, shifting climate zones hundreds of miles, possibly making farmlands drier, deserts wetter; melting ice caps; intensifying storms; spreading diseases to new areas; and raising ocean levels -- by anywhere from 3.5 inches to almost 3 feet by 2100, depending on emission controls, the IPCC said.
The seas would rise because water expands as it warms, and because of the runoff of ice melt from the continents.
In fact, the oceans have expanded, rising an average 1 to 2 millimeters a year -- up to one inch every 12 years -- during the 20th century, as measured by tide gauges.
More recently, satellites show "the rise has been highly accelerated," to 3 millimeters a year, said Walter Munk of San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Pacific islanders aren't alone. Rising seas are a growing threat from Alaska, where Eskimos are relocating an Arctic island village, to New Orleans and to Shanghai, China -- near-coastal cities already below sea level, sinking on their own, and further endangered by expanding oceans.
Prevailing winds, tidal peculiarities and other factors can make sea levels vary from place to place. Here at Funafuti, capital of a mini-nation midway between Hawaii and Australia, the gauges have shown the sea rising 5 to 6 millimeters a year since 1993, meteorologist Vavae said.
But some islands also are subsiding, sinking under their own weight. "In many islands, I think the answer is that both are happening -- subsidence and rising levels," said University of Hawaii oceanographer Roger Lukas.
Similarly uncertain: What will a swelling ocean do to a Funafuti?
One rule of thumb, disputed among specialists, holds that each millimeter rise in sea level can claim 1.5 meters -- 5 feet -- of shallow ocean beach. Some theorize, however, that a moderately higher Pacific would "rearrange," but not obliterate, an atoll like Funafuti -- a ring of islands around a central lagoon.
Rearrangement would be bad enough for Lototele Malie, 75, whose pastel-blue concrete house, with 15 adults and children inside, sits at the edge of Funafuti's dwindling ocean beach.
"A month ago the tide came right here," the sarong-clad old man said, pointing 3 feet away to the lip of his concrete-slab patio. "It's getting dangerous," he said, with the thunder of waves as a backdrop.
The Malies and others along Funafuti's fringe have little room to maneuver. Just 300 yards from their rear doors, the choppy waters of the 9-mile-wide lagoon are rising. In between sit other salt-caked plywood or cinderblock houses, beside gaping pits dug in the island's coral foundation long ago, by U.S. troops in World War II.
Those pits, filling now with seeping seawater, supplied the crushed material for Funafuti's airport, where today some of Vavae's "lakes" have begun to appear at peak tides.
"People got especially worried when the runway flooded. That's new," Margaret Bita, 45, told a visiting reporter after Sunday church services.
The church and little airport lie on the broadest part -- 600 yards across -- of slender, steamy, 7-mile-long Funafuti, home to about half the 11,000 people of Tuvalu, an impoverished nation getting by on fees from foreign fishing fleets, international aid and money sent home by Tuvaluan merchant seamen.
This main island narrows elsewhere to a mere 50 yards of sand, swaying palms and roadway between lagoon and sea. Its elevation is seldom more than a few feet. When February's "king" tides washed out a small causeway, children swam to school.
"I think it would be better if my kids were somewhere else," said hospital worker Beia Fetau, 40, preparing to help with Sunday school in shirt, tie and traditional male "sulu," or skirt.
As recently as the 1980s, Vavae said, the peak king tides came only in January and February. Now, she said, they crash ashore from September to May. But it's the quiet seepage from below that most alarms Tuvaluans.
Because of intruding saltwater, many have abandoned their gardens of deep-rooted "pulaka," a tuber crop grown in pits here for centuries. On the nearby islet of Vasafua, the coconut trees are dying. Another small uninhabited island, Tepuka Savilivili, has vanished beneath the waves.
"It went under water in the cyclone in 1997," Vavae said.
Disentangling long-term climate change from short-term natural variability is a challenge at the local level, especially in the Pacific, where the periodic climatic phenomenon El Nino raises and lowers ocean levels, causes droughts and stirs up severe storms. But people across the Pacific feel sure something unusual is happening.
In Kiribati, another mini-state north of Tuvalu, they've also lost an islet in the main atoll of Tarawa. On Majuro, the Marshalls' capital, the lagoon outside Ankit Stephen's home has undercut dozens of towering coconut palms, as islanders futilely try to stop the waves with piles of debris.
On Kosrae, a "high island" of volcanic peaks in the Federated States of Micronesia, the people have always lived along a flat coastal strip, but some are now dismantling their simple homes and heading for the hills, as recommended by the government.
"Nobody remembers such tides before. The sea is actually moving inland," said Simpson Abraham, head of Kosrae's Resources Development Authority. Some offshore islets have vanished, he said.
Here in Tuvalu, devoutly Christian since missionary days, many talk not of greenhouses, but of Genesis, reminding each other of God's promise to Noah: As long as rainbows cross the sky, there will be no more great floods. "God will protect us," one woman churchgoer assured a visitor.
Saufatu Sopoanga, as Tuvalu's prime minister, must look into the future, not the Bible. He is talking to New Zealand about a kind of 21st century Noah's ark -- a standby plan for a mass migration there.
"In 50 or 100 years, the islands are expected to go under water. What can we do?" Tuvalu's leader asked, on a day when a tropical morning downpour soon gave way to a rainbow in a blue, very warm sky.
"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -Diogenes
And while I'm at it, I might as well say what was on my mind about this:
And at this point, to continue the analogy, saying the extinctions and destruction of ecosystems that are occurring aren't necessarily our fault is like saying just because I threw some lit matches of the floor of the room where I had piled up some gasoline-soaked rags, that doesn't mean I'm responsible for burning your house down. It's not like I meant to or anything, after all.
Yes, it's true, there have been massive extinctions before; there will be again, probably long after we're gone ourselves. So what? How does that in any way lessen our responsibility for the damage we do cause? We all die - one day you will die, and your house will fall down sometime as well. But if I burn down your house with you in it, your inevitable mortality isn't going to work as a defense. We still call it murder. If I didn't specifically want to kill you, only remove the valubles from your house and only accidently burned everything down as I left, and think it's a darn shame it worked ot that way, I'm still just as guilty.Ranger Genius wrote:I agree that the loss of some native species is a shame, but it's hardly a catastrophe. It's also hardly irrefutable that it's all due to human activity. Ecological balances shift back and forth all the time. The atmosphere cools and warms, dominant species battle over territory, and some animals die. Someone mentioned in an earlier post on this thread that there have been (I believe) five massive species extinctions in biological history. We didn't kill them all
And at this point, to continue the analogy, saying the extinctions and destruction of ecosystems that are occurring aren't necessarily our fault is like saying just because I threw some lit matches of the floor of the room where I had piled up some gasoline-soaked rags, that doesn't mean I'm responsible for burning your house down. It's not like I meant to or anything, after all.
"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -Diogenes
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theCryptofishist
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KellY's Kudos
Thanks for taking this on, KellY. I've found this thread troubling, because the terms it was framed in are so stark and the rejection of much of the science so blanket that it becomes difficult for me to even respond sensibly. I appreciate your fighting the good fight.
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Rob the Wop
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I agree that our pollution and massive worldwide lumber harvesting is creating changes to our environment. My hesitancy over issues is how much of the global warming is due to a cyclic pattern of nature vs. our direct influence? We know of cyclic climate changes throughout history. The DIRECT link between our actions and global warming is difficult to prove beyond theory, as scientific models are hard to achieve for entire planets.
BTW- I have an electric car, lawnmower, etc. and live in an area where 90% of my electricity is from hydroelectric. I compost my organic materials and use them for my garden, burn paper and wood refuse, and try to buy in bulk. So I obviously have some concerns, though I would hardly call myself an environmentalist. I simply believe most issues such as these contain the truth somewhere in the middle ground.
BTW- I have an electric car, lawnmower, etc. and live in an area where 90% of my electricity is from hydroelectric. I compost my organic materials and use them for my garden, burn paper and wood refuse, and try to buy in bulk. So I obviously have some concerns, though I would hardly call myself an environmentalist. I simply believe most issues such as these contain the truth somewhere in the middle ground.
[b]The other, other white meat.[/b]
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Ranger Genius
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Why is it that the coasts of New Zealand are moving up, and yet the tidal levels of Tazmania (see my earlier post with the photo) are lower now by about a meter than they were in 1841, unless they just fluctuate naturally? Beaches erode, tectonic plates shift, coastlines change. It happens. Showing a chronological relationship doesn't prove a causal relationship. Post hoc, ergo, propter hoc.
I've not categorically denied the occurance of Global warming, or other ecological issues, and I would like to see something like the Kyoto accord put into effect. My argument is and has been that environmental activists have grossly overstated their claims (especially RE: global warming, North American Deforestation, and rising tidal levels). Overstating the case damages its credibility, and harms the cause. I would like to see some honest investigation into the matter that has not been marred by personal agendas and bad science. (Incidentally, your article once again sites the IPCC study, which we've already discussed. The data are flawed, and I showed numbers to that effect. The climate models they're basing those data on don't perform for the last fifteen years of climate trends. Time to get a new loaded die.)
I found this paragraph from your article particularly interesting:
I've not categorically denied the occurance of Global warming, or other ecological issues, and I would like to see something like the Kyoto accord put into effect. My argument is and has been that environmental activists have grossly overstated their claims (especially RE: global warming, North American Deforestation, and rising tidal levels). Overstating the case damages its credibility, and harms the cause. I would like to see some honest investigation into the matter that has not been marred by personal agendas and bad science. (Incidentally, your article once again sites the IPCC study, which we've already discussed. The data are flawed, and I showed numbers to that effect. The climate models they're basing those data on don't perform for the last fifteen years of climate trends. Time to get a new loaded die.)
Remember this line from my earlier post? Yeah, the panel didn't write that. One guy did. After everyone else left. I thought we'd already been over this. God, it's like sand and a sieve. Call me Sisyphus.In a pivotal 2001 report, the IPCC listed as a key finding: "Most of observed warming over last 50 years likely due to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities."
I found this paragraph from your article particularly interesting:
And clearly, they're the experts. You may as well tell me that I should buy the argument because of Woman's Intuition.Disentangling long-term climate change from short-term natural variability is a challenge at the local level, especially in the Pacific, where the periodic climatic phenomenon El Nino raises and lowers ocean levels, causes droughts and stirs up severe storms. But people across the Pacific feel sure something unusual is happening.
Tom Stoppard wrote: A syllogism: One, he has never known anything like it. Two, he has never known anything to write home about. Therefore, it is nothing to write home about.
“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
Short response until I have more time: Stop being so fricking condescending. It flavors all your posts and it's annoying. And yes, in that the people in question have lived on the islands for centuries throughout climatological fluctuations and they're now disappearing under the waves, they do have a certain level of expertise, despite lack of scientific training.Ranger Genius wrote: I found this paragraph from your article particularly interesting:And clearly, they're the experts. You may as well tell me that I should buy the argument because of Woman's Intuition.Disentangling long-term climate change from short-term natural variability is a challenge at the local level, especially in the Pacific, where the periodic climatic phenomenon El Nino raises and lowers ocean levels, causes droughts and stirs up severe storms. But people across the Pacific feel sure something unusual is happening.Tom Stoppard wrote: A syllogism: One, he has never known anything like it. Two, he has never known anything to write home about. Therefore, it is nothing to write home about.
And thank you, Cryptofish.
"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -Diogenes
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Ranger Genius
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They live for centuries? Why haven't they shared their secrets of longevity with the rest of us?KellY wrote:yes, in that the people in question have lived on the islands for centuries throughout climatological fluctuations and they're now disappearing under the waves, they do have a certain level of expertise, despite lack of scientific training.
What you mean to say is that they've lived through one brief period of climatoligical fluctuations, which they compare the anecdotal history that has been passed down to them.
There were a lot of other questions I raised in my response that yoou neglected; I would like to hear answers.
I'm not deliberately trying to attack you; just your dogma.
“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
This sir, is exactly what I was referring to regarding your obnoxious condescension, and I fear you have descended further into out-and-out (although surely not conciously intended) racism. You make it sound as if 21st century Pacific Islanders are simple natives wearing grass skirts, whose only knowledge of their own history is the stories Grandma told around the fireside. You are following in the footsteps of centuries of European explorers and colonists who felt sure that they understood the world outside their own borders far more than the people who've lived there for time out of mind (and you know exactly what I mean by that phrase, so spare me your little asides about longevity).Ranger Genius wrote:They live for centuries? Why haven't they shared their secrets of longevity with the rest of us?KellY wrote:yes, in that the people in question have lived on the islands for centuries throughout climatological fluctuations and they're now disappearing under the waves, they do have a certain level of expertise, despite lack of scientific training.
What you mean to say is that they've lived through one brief period of climatoligical fluctuations, which they compare the anecdotal history that has been passed down to them.
To put in in simple words for you, people have lived on these islands for a very long time, throughout various climate changes, without having to evacuate, as it now seems likely will be necessary if the current trends continue.
As for addressing your previous points, I did some research about your supposed evidence regarding the tidal mark on the "Isle of the Dead". First, I'd like to point out that it's rather ironic to me that you're main argument against rising sea levels is based on the infallibility of some 19th century sailors to correctly gauge mid-tide in foriegn waters. Also, you didn't bother to reveal the source of your interpretation of that photo. Another CATO offering, perhaps?
Second, a single photo like that is meaningless. Yes, normal tidal change in that area is around 75 cm according to everything I read, but tides can also be affected by lunar phases, atmospheric pressure, storms, etc. In other words, there are a number of reasons that the water level could have been abnormally low at that specific moment.
Ironically, the most detailed and convincing explanation of the uselessness of the "Isle of the Dead" as a way to gauge ocean levels comes from John L. Daly, an author who has largely shares your view that global warming is a bugaboo made up to scare people. It seems that the same mark made by Captain Ross has been used as evidence for rising ocean levels! In a very detailed and as far as I can tell well-researched article, Daly explains the many factors why the mark can't be used as a reliable indicator of the sea level. These reasons include inaccuracy on the part of the sailors, and most interestingly a series of earthquakes in the 1880's that shifted the land where the mark is located. I suggest at least skimming the whole article here: http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/
Actually, looking at his (his organization's, actually, as Daly died earlier this year and it's still being updated) homepage I see that they have a picture of the same mark, trying to make the same point you did. Hmm, very strange. Perhaps the folks now keeping up the page didn't read the whole article, which as I said only debunks Ross's mark as an indicator, but didn't make any case against rising ocean levels that I could divine.
The rest of the page is a bunch of technical stuff that I don't have the science to judge whether it's valid or not. Nor, I suspect, does RG or anyone else on this board. Which brings me back around to my original point by posting that last article. Yes, there are some scientists who argue global warming isn't happening, or that if it is it isn't our fault, and more recently that even if it does happen it's OK. Meanwhile we have many many other scientists saying the opposite, AND all these real life phenomena such as record global temperatures, glaciers that are thousands of years old suddenly disappearing, a piece of ice the size Marlyland breaking off of Antarctica ( http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/media/April2000.html ), and lowland coastal area being threatened all over the world. Also, we know that we're pumping the atmosphere full of pollution, including greenhouse and ozone-damaging gasses.
So, yes, global warming is not "fact" but a theory (just like evolution), and you will probably be able to find people who will argue that it's not true or irrelevant for a long time to come. But at this point in the game, I think it's really stupid not to act as if it's true. In terms of risk management, you've got the survival of ecosystems, people, and pretty much the whole global political framework as we know it (just ask the Pentagon) all on one hand, versus the profits of energy, auto, and similar industries that have a powerful financial interests in maintaining the staus quo. Faced with that choice, which side would you want to err on?
"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -Diogenes
Just a few more articles to toss out there....
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/ ... ntemp.html
and
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 042204.php
Interesting stuff although not compelling around the center point of the discussion which seems to be whether fluctuations suggest a long term, permanent change.
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/ ... ntemp.html
and
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 042204.php
Interesting stuff although not compelling around the center point of the discussion which seems to be whether fluctuations suggest a long term, permanent change.
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Ranger Genius
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My implication was not that the people to whom you referred were dirt-eating aborigines, only that the reliable recorded histories for many such societies are relatively recent ones.
I apologize for not being able to read your articles at this time, ISO, and I will do so at the earliest opportunity.
If you want people to believe that global climate change and ecological destabilization is a problem, you mustn't overstate your case. When a problem is put in the apocalyptic terms that this one has, and then fails to deliver the apocalypse, why would we listen? (Think of it as a case of "The Boy Who Cried 'The Sky is Falling!'")
I apologize for not being able to read your articles at this time, ISO, and I will do so at the earliest opportunity.
If you want people to believe that global climate change and ecological destabilization is a problem, you mustn't overstate your case. When a problem is put in the apocalyptic terms that this one has, and then fails to deliver the apocalypse, why would we listen? (Think of it as a case of "The Boy Who Cried 'The Sky is Falling!'")
“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
I don't think the potential for apocalypse due to global warming - an idea I pretty much subscribe to given what I've read to date - is any more immediate that than the fact that a portion of California will at some point cleave off and become an island off the coast of what's now North America. The time frames we're talking about are exceptionally long when compared to generations of humans - or even their civilizations. I believe this contributes somewhat to the perception (and belief) that if you can't conclusively sense or measure the change during a few generations that things 1) aren't as bad as they seem or 2) aren't happening at all given what the media and the the science suggests.apocalyptic terms that this one has, and then fails to deliver the apocalypse
Desert dogs drink deep.
This just in from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3792209.stm):
Ice cores unlock climate secrets
Global climate patterns stretching back 740,000 years have been confirmed by a three-kilometre-long ice core drilled from the Antarctic, Nature reports.
Analysis of the ice proves our planet has had eight ice ages during that period, punctuated by rather brief warm spells - one of which we enjoy today.
If past patterns are followed in the future, we can expect our "mild snap" to last another 15,000 years.
The data may also help predict how greenhouse gases will affect climate.
Initial tests on gas trapped in the ice core show that current carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are higher than they have been in 440,000 years...
...Epica is still busy analysing the ice core's atmospheric gases, but preliminary results suggest that present CO2 levels are remarkably high.
"We have never seen greenhouse gases anything like what we have seen today," said Dr Wolff.
...By understanding what greenhouse gases did to global temperature in the past, scientists might be able to predict the effect of humankind's enthusiastic CO2 belching.
"There is great controversy as to whether human beings have changed the climate," said Professor McManus. "But there is no doubt about the fact that human beings have changed the Earth's atmosphere. The increased levels of greenhouse gases are geologically incredible."
He added: "It is something of grave concern to someone like me, who sees the strong connection between greenhouse gases and climate in the past."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
So, as I was saying, given what we know, is it not logical to behave as if human-induced global warming is in fact what's occurring, instead of waiting until every fucking oil-company funded scientist agrees that it's so? I'm not just asking RG folks. Anyone else got an opinion?
Ice cores unlock climate secrets
Global climate patterns stretching back 740,000 years have been confirmed by a three-kilometre-long ice core drilled from the Antarctic, Nature reports.
Analysis of the ice proves our planet has had eight ice ages during that period, punctuated by rather brief warm spells - one of which we enjoy today.
If past patterns are followed in the future, we can expect our "mild snap" to last another 15,000 years.
The data may also help predict how greenhouse gases will affect climate.
Initial tests on gas trapped in the ice core show that current carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are higher than they have been in 440,000 years...
...Epica is still busy analysing the ice core's atmospheric gases, but preliminary results suggest that present CO2 levels are remarkably high.
"We have never seen greenhouse gases anything like what we have seen today," said Dr Wolff.
...By understanding what greenhouse gases did to global temperature in the past, scientists might be able to predict the effect of humankind's enthusiastic CO2 belching.
"There is great controversy as to whether human beings have changed the climate," said Professor McManus. "But there is no doubt about the fact that human beings have changed the Earth's atmosphere. The increased levels of greenhouse gases are geologically incredible."
He added: "It is something of grave concern to someone like me, who sees the strong connection between greenhouse gases and climate in the past."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
So, as I was saying, given what we know, is it not logical to behave as if human-induced global warming is in fact what's occurring, instead of waiting until every fucking oil-company funded scientist agrees that it's so? I'm not just asking RG folks. Anyone else got an opinion?
"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -Diogenes
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theCryptofishist
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KellY
Agree completely on the wisest course of action in the mid-term, as I've said before.
I'm just puzzled by this thread in a way. RG has elsewhere shown himself to be an intelligent and worthy poster, but I feel he's argued his position poorly and used tainted data--a bad move when you are claiming that others lose credibility for that same thing.
After what you said about that photo of the line, I spent some time thinking about my initial reaction which was not to be very impressed, because it didn't look like a rock that had had 100+ years of contact with the ocean. Okay, that's an off the cuff observation based on a short look at the photo, but once I started thinking about it it was well, how do we know that that's the line they painted and that they painted no other lines and what is the historical evidence and one piece of anamolous data doesn't refute anything. (I'm reminded of the "face on Mars" photo and the huge amount of attendent fuss.) And I don't really recall many apocalyptic pronouncements by scientists per se. I certainly aint gonna argue that some scientists (i.e. Robert Gallo) don't do all sorts of nasty things for money, glory and publicity, but I will say that many are primarily doing what they love and searching for truth rather than trying to take over the world or make a million dollars. And if you're trying to do that, you're better off allying yourself WITH the oil companies than against them. And certainly there are actual cases of data cooking (if you cant trust the monk of Brno, who can you trust?) but peer review is a pretty powerful tool to check excesses.
So who's spouting apocalyptic scenarios? The media for one--science reporting in this country is nothing to brag about and then there's always Hollywood and pulp novelists who are willing to exagerate anything to sell a few more seats/books. And possibly activists. I don't want to get on their case, as from what I've seen, being an activist is a long hard thankless job and you tend to lose more than you win (depending on the issues of course.) I would say that most environmental activists have experienced minor apocalypses--whether it's the creek that they caught tadpoles in as children now being culverted or damned, or the remote village where they spent 2 Peace Corps years now having a golfcourse and even worse poverty than that they were fighting 20 years ago or any of one hundred other scenarios. And they are trying to promote participation in the indifferent which does tend to color rhetoric a little purple.
I;m wondering how much of this is driven by RG's understandable resistence to anything that smacks of the groupthink of his upbringing. That's the best hypothesis I've come up with. Still, I remain confused. and I really have trouble when one of the main sources for this arguement takes money from the timber industry and has said there's no difference between a clear-cut and a meadow.
Agree completely on the wisest course of action in the mid-term, as I've said before.
I'm just puzzled by this thread in a way. RG has elsewhere shown himself to be an intelligent and worthy poster, but I feel he's argued his position poorly and used tainted data--a bad move when you are claiming that others lose credibility for that same thing.
After what you said about that photo of the line, I spent some time thinking about my initial reaction which was not to be very impressed, because it didn't look like a rock that had had 100+ years of contact with the ocean. Okay, that's an off the cuff observation based on a short look at the photo, but once I started thinking about it it was well, how do we know that that's the line they painted and that they painted no other lines and what is the historical evidence and one piece of anamolous data doesn't refute anything. (I'm reminded of the "face on Mars" photo and the huge amount of attendent fuss.) And I don't really recall many apocalyptic pronouncements by scientists per se. I certainly aint gonna argue that some scientists (i.e. Robert Gallo) don't do all sorts of nasty things for money, glory and publicity, but I will say that many are primarily doing what they love and searching for truth rather than trying to take over the world or make a million dollars. And if you're trying to do that, you're better off allying yourself WITH the oil companies than against them. And certainly there are actual cases of data cooking (if you cant trust the monk of Brno, who can you trust?) but peer review is a pretty powerful tool to check excesses.
So who's spouting apocalyptic scenarios? The media for one--science reporting in this country is nothing to brag about and then there's always Hollywood and pulp novelists who are willing to exagerate anything to sell a few more seats/books. And possibly activists. I don't want to get on their case, as from what I've seen, being an activist is a long hard thankless job and you tend to lose more than you win (depending on the issues of course.) I would say that most environmental activists have experienced minor apocalypses--whether it's the creek that they caught tadpoles in as children now being culverted or damned, or the remote village where they spent 2 Peace Corps years now having a golfcourse and even worse poverty than that they were fighting 20 years ago or any of one hundred other scenarios. And they are trying to promote participation in the indifferent which does tend to color rhetoric a little purple.
I;m wondering how much of this is driven by RG's understandable resistence to anything that smacks of the groupthink of his upbringing. That's the best hypothesis I've come up with. Still, I remain confused. and I really have trouble when one of the main sources for this arguement takes money from the timber industry and has said there's no difference between a clear-cut and a meadow.
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Simply Joel
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"Ecology is the science of everything. Nobody knows everything. Nobody even knows everything about any one thing. And most of us don't know much. Say it's ten-thirty on a Saturday night. Where are your teenage children? I didn't ask where they said they were going. Where are they really? What are they doing? Who are they with? Have you met the other kids' families? And what is tonight's pot smoking, wine-cooler drinking, and sex in the backseats of cars going to mean in a hundred years? Now extend these questions to the entire solar system."
O'Rourke, P.J
O'Rourke, P.J
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DVD Burner
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I'm sure no one will pay much attention to this mostly because it is posted by me.
http://www.changingworldtech.com/home.html
however, if anyone is really intersted in doing something about the environment, then something ought to be done about pushing to have more plants like this one. (This government wants nothing to do with it.)
http://www.changingworldtech.com/home.html
however, if anyone is really intersted in doing something about the environment, then something ought to be done about pushing to have more plants like this one. (This government wants nothing to do with it.)
https://www.facebook.com/NeXTCODER
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DVD Burner
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But you still did'nt read the site huh?Badger wrote:Ya reap what ya sow.I'm sure no one will pay much attention to this mostly because it is posted by me.
Too bad. Seems like your not as serious as you claim after all. Knew you would fall for it. Too simple for words.
https://www.facebook.com/NeXTCODER
Another interesting site to consider for both skeptics and believers alike.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/kilimanjaro/
Does a good job at hinting at some of the positions raised on both sides here in this thread.
It's a companion site to a piece done on the PBS program NOVA.
Highly recommend it
[/url]
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/kilimanjaro/
Does a good job at hinting at some of the positions raised on both sides here in this thread.
It's a companion site to a piece done on the PBS program NOVA.
Highly recommend it
[/url]
Desert dogs drink deep.
You know, I don't think RG is ever coming back...afraid to honestly answer some questions, maybe?
Anyway, here's another little note on the topic:
Toxic pollution rose 5 percent in 2002
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John Heilprin
June 23, 2004 | Toxic chemical releases into the environment rose 5 percent in 2002, marking only the second such increase reported by the Environmental Protection Agency in nearly two decades, and the first since 1997.
Some 4.79 billion pounds were released in 2002, the latest for which figures are available, not including releases from metal mining, the EPA reports. The agency stopped including that data because of a recent court decision in an industry challenge.
The increase reversed a recent trend, and was a big turnaround from last year's report by EPA that chemical releases in 2001 had declined 13 percent from a year earlier.
Kimberly Terese Nelson, the EPA's chief information officer, blamed the "extraordinarily large change" on the 1999 shutdown of BHP Copper Co.'s San Manuel plant in Tucson, Ariz., where 2,000 people worked. Dismantling a plant turns components and product into waste.
"If we were take that one facility out we would see a 3 percent decrease," Nelson said Tuesday of the releases of 650 chemicals by 24,379 facilities that EPA tracks. Last year, 25,388 facilities reported their findings.
EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said EPA's annual Toxics Release Inventory begun under a 1986 law wasn't meant to be all-inclusive of all types of emissions and chemicals. She called it "one of just several tools" for informing the public on that pollution.
EPA figures show 1997 was the only other year with an increase, 6 percent, in the several billion pounds of pollution allowed yearly into the air, water and ground in the United States.
Even so, a study by two environmental groups said EPA was underreporting the air pollution portion of releases of chemicals and emissions by 330 million pounds a year. They cast the inventory as particularly soft on refineries and chemical plants, keeping as much as 16 percent of the nation's air pollution "off the books."
"It's time that the EPA and the states deal with the problem of inaccurate and flawed reporting of toxic releases," said Kelly Haragan of the Rockefeller Family Fund's Environmental Integrity Project, which joined with Texas-based Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention in doing the study.
The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, however, described the groups' conclusions as misleading, because other EPA data shows some decreases in nationwide air toxics emissions. It said the refining industry helped lower pollution through improved technology and management and cleaner gasolines.
"Ironically, if environmentalists intend to push for an even greater regulatory burden on refineries, they may complicate the smooth introduction of newer, cleaner fuels," the trade group said.
EPA reported a 10 percent increase in releases of mercury -- which Nelson blamed on a single gold mine -- and a 3.2 percent increase in releases of lead. It is the second year in a row that the EPA is requiring facilities to tell state and federal authorities about lead releases of more than 100 pounds. Previously, only much larger releases were reported.
Releases of dioxin, a chemical worrisome in even small amounts, decreased by 5 percent from the previous year.
Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the 2002 increase "proves that the policies of the Bush administration have moved us backward, not forward, on the environment."
The biggest polluters in recent years have been hard-rock mining companies and coal-burning power plants, and 2002 was no exception, according to the EPA.
Last year, Nelson told Congress the EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget wanted to make reporting easier, faster and less burdensome for companies.
Anyway, here's another little note on the topic:
Toxic pollution rose 5 percent in 2002
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John Heilprin
June 23, 2004 | Toxic chemical releases into the environment rose 5 percent in 2002, marking only the second such increase reported by the Environmental Protection Agency in nearly two decades, and the first since 1997.
Some 4.79 billion pounds were released in 2002, the latest for which figures are available, not including releases from metal mining, the EPA reports. The agency stopped including that data because of a recent court decision in an industry challenge.
The increase reversed a recent trend, and was a big turnaround from last year's report by EPA that chemical releases in 2001 had declined 13 percent from a year earlier.
Kimberly Terese Nelson, the EPA's chief information officer, blamed the "extraordinarily large change" on the 1999 shutdown of BHP Copper Co.'s San Manuel plant in Tucson, Ariz., where 2,000 people worked. Dismantling a plant turns components and product into waste.
"If we were take that one facility out we would see a 3 percent decrease," Nelson said Tuesday of the releases of 650 chemicals by 24,379 facilities that EPA tracks. Last year, 25,388 facilities reported their findings.
EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said EPA's annual Toxics Release Inventory begun under a 1986 law wasn't meant to be all-inclusive of all types of emissions and chemicals. She called it "one of just several tools" for informing the public on that pollution.
EPA figures show 1997 was the only other year with an increase, 6 percent, in the several billion pounds of pollution allowed yearly into the air, water and ground in the United States.
Even so, a study by two environmental groups said EPA was underreporting the air pollution portion of releases of chemicals and emissions by 330 million pounds a year. They cast the inventory as particularly soft on refineries and chemical plants, keeping as much as 16 percent of the nation's air pollution "off the books."
"It's time that the EPA and the states deal with the problem of inaccurate and flawed reporting of toxic releases," said Kelly Haragan of the Rockefeller Family Fund's Environmental Integrity Project, which joined with Texas-based Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention in doing the study.
The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, however, described the groups' conclusions as misleading, because other EPA data shows some decreases in nationwide air toxics emissions. It said the refining industry helped lower pollution through improved technology and management and cleaner gasolines.
"Ironically, if environmentalists intend to push for an even greater regulatory burden on refineries, they may complicate the smooth introduction of newer, cleaner fuels," the trade group said.
EPA reported a 10 percent increase in releases of mercury -- which Nelson blamed on a single gold mine -- and a 3.2 percent increase in releases of lead. It is the second year in a row that the EPA is requiring facilities to tell state and federal authorities about lead releases of more than 100 pounds. Previously, only much larger releases were reported.
Releases of dioxin, a chemical worrisome in even small amounts, decreased by 5 percent from the previous year.
Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the 2002 increase "proves that the policies of the Bush administration have moved us backward, not forward, on the environment."
The biggest polluters in recent years have been hard-rock mining companies and coal-burning power plants, and 2002 was no exception, according to the EPA.
Last year, Nelson told Congress the EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget wanted to make reporting easier, faster and less burdensome for companies.
"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -Diogenes
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Ranger Genius
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Sorry for the absence, I no longer have internet access at home. No ISP and no TV: does this make me a hermit?
Crypto: You may have hit the nail on the head there: Dogma is dogma, even if you paint it green.
KellY: While I don't have any reason to call into doubt the veracity of that last article you posted or its citations, I do have some complaints about it (probably more to do with the author than with the research):
Why don't we start barking up the right trees?
Crypto: You may have hit the nail on the head there: Dogma is dogma, even if you paint it green.
KellY: While I don't have any reason to call into doubt the veracity of that last article you posted or its citations, I do have some complaints about it (probably more to do with the author than with the research):
Five percent compared to what? And does this account for new facilities? What chemicals are classified as "toxic?" What constitutes "Release?"Toxic chemical releases into the environment rose 5 percent in 2002
So the number of facilities increased by over 4%, and the increase in total emissions increased 5%?by 24,379 facilities that EPA tracks. Last year, 25,388 facilities reported their findings
If one single facility closing can make a difference of 10%, an addition of 4% of the total number of facilities (1009) might have increased emissions by up to 10,090%, mightn't it? What if we only compared emissions on a facility-by-facility basis...like with retailers reporting earnings changes for "Same-store" sales?the EPA's chief information officer, blamed the "extraordinarily large change" on the 1999 shutdown of BHP Copper Co.'s San Manuel plant in Tucson, Ariz.,
So why aren't we going after these companies? In my home state of UT (of which the current head of the EPA used to be governor, if you'll recall), 90% of our power is provided by coal-fired power plants. But there are no large bodies of water to provide power, and every time it's suggested that we dam one of the few "rivers" (most of which would be named as creeks if they were anywhere east of the Mississippi), the same environmental activists who rail about air pollution get up in arms about the impacts of the dam (In fact, there's a big movement to blow up a couple of the dams we already have[go google for "Drain Lake Powell"]). And don't even mention Nuclear power to them. They're already going apeshit that the Goshute tribe wants to store low-level waste in the west desert (land that's not really worth anything..sagebrush won't even grow in some of it). We don't have enough open plains to make wind power feasible, especially near the population centers, so what the hell are we supposed to do? Cold Fusion? Perpetual Motion?The biggest polluters in recent years have been hard-rock mining companies and coal-burning power plants, and 2002 was no exception, according to the EPA.
Why don't we start barking up the right trees?
“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
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theCryptofishist
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No, but it makes Homer go crazy.Ranger Genius wrote:Sorry for the absence, I no longer have internet access at home. No ISP and no TV: does this make me a hermit?
"Release means any spilling, leaking, pumping, pouring, emitting, emptying, discharging, injecting, escaping, leaching, dumping, or disposing into the environment (including the abandonment or discarding of barrels, containers, and other closed receptacles) of any toxic chemical."Five percent compared to what? And does this account for new facilities? What chemicals are classified as "toxic?" What constitutes "Release?"Toxic chemical releases into the environment rose 5 percent in 2002by 24,379 facilities that EPA tracks. Last year, 25,388 facilities reported their findings
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfrh ... 72_00.html
"Toxic chemical means a chemical or chemical category listed in § 372.65."
Such as:
"Antimony..................................... 7440-36-0 1/1/87
Arsenic...................................... 7440-38-2 1/1/87
Asbestos (friable)........................... 1332-21-4 1/1/87
Atrazine (6-Chloro-N-ethyl-N'-(1-methylethyl)- 1912-24-9 1/1/95
1,3,5,-triazine-2,4-diamine)................
Barium....................................... 7440-39-3 1/1/87
Bendiocarb [2,2-Dimethyl-1,3-benzodioxol-4-ol 22781-23-3 1/1/95
methylcarbamate]............................
Benfluralin (N-Butyl-N-ethyl-2,6-dinitro-4- 1861-40-1 1/1/95
(trifluoromethyl)benzenamine)...............
Benomyl...................................... 17804-35-2 1/1/95
Benzal chloride.............................. 98-87-3 1/1/87
Benzamide.................................... 55-21-0 1/1/87
Benzene...................................... 71-43-2 1/1/87
Benzidine.................................... 92-87-5 1/1/87
Benzo(g,h,i)perylene......................... 00191-24-2 1/00
Benzoic trichloride (Benzotrichloride)....... 98-07-7 1/1/87
Benzoyl chloride............................. 98-88-4 1/1/87
Benzoyl peroxide............................. 94-36-0 1/1/87
Benzyl chloride.............................. 100-44-7 1/1/87
Beryllium.................................... 7440-41-7 1/1/87
(An almost random sample)
Complete list : http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfrh ... 72_00.html
Levels vary in part because thresholds for reporting tend to go down over time. Also, new chemicals are added. Both mean that releases not previously tracked are added. Not sure if it's the case here, but in general they (the Feds) try to close down the more polluting plants and keep cleaner ones open. Also, new ones probably have better cleaning tech built in. The Inventory does do plant by plant tracking, and it's posted on the net.So the number of facilities increased by over 4%, and the increase in total emissions increased 5%?If one single facility closing can make a difference of 10%, an addition of 4% of the total number of facilities (1009) might have increased emissions by up to 10,090%, mightn't it? What if we only compared emissions on a facility-by-facility basis...like with retailers reporting earnings changes for "Same-store" sales?the EPA's chief information officer, blamed the "extraordinarily large change" on the 1999 shutdown of BHP Copper Co.'s San Manuel plant in Tucson, Ariz.,
http://www.epa.gov/tri/tridata/index.htm
(btw, 2003 data has now been posted.)
Um, unwillingness of Americans to give up an energy intensive lifestyle? Excessive coziness between energy interests and federal and state officials?[/quote]So why aren't we going after these companies?The biggest polluters in recent years have been hard-rock mining companies and coal-burning power plants, and 2002 was no exception, according to the EPA.
Weeee're back
Sorry, I just won't let this thread die. RG, nice to see you back. Sorry if I implied you just ducked out of the conversation. Not having internet access is a pain. Didn't get to the eplaya myself for a bit and didn't see you'd posted.
Anyway, the nitpicking from the last article I posted seems to completely miss the larger point. Classic not seeing the forest for the trees, IMHO. The point is, pollution is increasing at measurably signifigant levels. So, I've asked this a couple times, and I'll ask again, hoping for a straight-up answer.
"Given what we know, is it not logical to behave as if human-induced global warming is in fact what's occurring and adjust our behaviour accordingly, instead of waiting until every fucking oil-company funded scientist agrees that it's so?"
By the way, what are the right trees?
Also by the way, it's rather common knowledge that W. tapped your ex-gov to head the EPA because of his decidedly unenvironmental bias.
Anyway, the nitpicking from the last article I posted seems to completely miss the larger point. Classic not seeing the forest for the trees, IMHO. The point is, pollution is increasing at measurably signifigant levels. So, I've asked this a couple times, and I'll ask again, hoping for a straight-up answer.
"Given what we know, is it not logical to behave as if human-induced global warming is in fact what's occurring and adjust our behaviour accordingly, instead of waiting until every fucking oil-company funded scientist agrees that it's so?"
By the way, what are the right trees?
Also by the way, it's rather common knowledge that W. tapped your ex-gov to head the EPA because of his decidedly unenvironmental bias.
"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -Diogenes