Already been closed, edited, reopened.

Umm, I missed a week here and there. Too bad it was edited - I would have liked to see what caused the door the slam shut.

 

I for one am pleased to see it open. Thanks, Tcmtech, for bringing sense and real info into the topic to counter the hype, fiction and guesswork present in the media.

 

Umm, I missed a week here and there. Too bad it was edited - I would have liked to see what caused the door the slam shut.

Politics crept in. When does it not?

 

The edits were way back in the first 2 - 3 pages from months ago.

Nothing much was missed.

 

Politics crept in. When does it not?

That what has surprised me about this thread - 200 posts and no politics. But Brownout informed me that politics had crept in and edited and, therefore, I don't have to be impressed anymore.

 

I'm not sure whats being seen as political here.

I see opinions and the like but not much else that concerns me to any degree.

 

Totally agree! There is no equavilance to a relatively slow natural seepage to the estimated 210 millions of gallons or oil that flowed over 87 days.

Into 643 quadrillion gallons of water.

Edit: and, for my last comment on this subject, this.

 

I'm not sure whats being seen as political here.

I see opinions and the like but not much else that concerns me to any degree.

That was my point - most other threads on business, economics, environment and policy - especially a controversial one like fracking - quickly turn to politics. I was just impressed with everyone's self control and not falling into the political debate. I was wrong and it apparently had fallen intoearly on, but surprising control has been displayed since then.

 

Into 643 quadrillion gallons of water.

Edit: and, for my last comment on this subject, this.

Western PA had the first oil production in the country. It was seeping all over the place (and still is). There are places here named Petrolia and Slippery Rock - related to the natural flow of oil along River banks. No cleanup needed, fish still swim and people still fish. We all may be a little weird but we still survive.

 

Into 643 quadrillion gallons of water.

And oil slicks over a mile long

Edit: and, for my last comment on this subject, this.

This is good news ( I already read it ) However, not all the damage has been/well be repaired.

fish still swim and people still fish

In the bayous of southern Louisiana, the BP oil spill shut down most fishing, and 12,000 people in the seafood industry lost their livelihood.

 

And oil slicks over a mile long...

On a sea with a surface area of 600,000 square miles.

Perhaps if you say something like, "Oil slicks over 63,360,000 milliinches long....", your numbers will sound more alarming to me...

 

I believe they are alarming enough. How many times in nature do you see miles long slicks? Comparing the entire gulf of the contaminated area is less than meaningless, and does not trivialize the damage that was done, especially to environmentally sensitive areas near the spill.

Though oil is no longer readily visible on the surface, it isn’t gone. Scientists have found significant amounts on the Gulf floor, and the oil that has already washed into wetlands and beaches will likely persist for years. We likely will not see the full extent of impacts for many years, which makes creating and implementing successful restoration plans a serious challenge

source: http://www.nwf.org/What-We-Do/Protect-Habitat/Gulf-Restoration/Oil-Spill/Effects-on-Wildlife.aspx

 

I believe they are alarming enough. How many times in nature do you see miles long slicks? Comparing the entire gulf of the contaminated area is less than meaningless, and does not trivialize the damage that was done.

I agree that the BP spill was terrible - both in terms of environmental damage, lost energy and toxins. My comment above was meant to say that nature is surprisingly good at repairing itself. On the other hand, old oil spills along the California coast means beach-goers must still scrape tar-balls off of their feet after walking on the beach.

 

The problem I always come up against when comparing environmental disaster events is to what is a fair representation of what is truly bad and what is just a local inconvenience.

Point is how much area does an oil spill cover and effect and for how long Vs any noteworthy volcanic eruption, earthquake, drought, or large scale storm related natural occurrence?

I'm not saying polluting without a concern is good and irrelevant to our well being but when human scale messes are measured against any of the average natural disaster events our pile of poop in the yard looks pretty small in comparison but nobody dare mention that on the news.

 

The doomsayers would have us believe that if we don't give up all the things that make life livable (beyond mere subsistence), then we are all, well, doomed.

They predict catastrophe at every turn (and have done so for the better part of the past 100 years), yet the earth, and humans, continue to thrive regardless (but *not* regardless of their form of government).

We are supposed to be well past "peak oil" now, yet current reserves are greater than at any point in history.

The earth was supposed to be on fire, or at least suffering from a serious fever, yet global temperatures have not changed a single fraction of a degree in the past 18 years -- even as CO2 levels have risen relentlessly.

We are all supposed to be starving now due to over-population, yet farming is *so* productive due to GM that nearly no one need actually farm anymore -- and so much grain is grown that we can afford to waste it in the inefficient process of turning it into ethanol.

Mortality rates were to skyrocket due to pollution and toxic waste, yet we are living longer lives than ever before, with health strong enough into old age that a product like Viagra is extremely profitable.

Examples of their errors, and illogic, abound. Now, when I hear them preach, I just stick my fingers in my ears and say, "hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm".

tcmtech, you go right on fracking to your heart's content. And when you are done, frack some more. And get those pipelines built. I'd like to see billowing smokestacks all over the world consuming the fruits of your labor. To me, that is progress...in every sense of the word. Go Humans!

 

tcmtech, you go right on fracking to your heart's content. And when you are done, frack some more. And get those pipelines built. I'd like to see billowing smokestacks all over the world consuming the fruits of your labor. To me, that is progress...in every sense of the word. Go Humans!

Except, you notice, that you generally DON'T see billowing smoke stacks -- at least not in the U.S. and many other "developed" countries. We have made such huge progress -- yes, in part due to government regulation -- in pollution control that to even tell that a particular smoke stack is in use you usually need to be very close and look very closely for the shimmer due to the heat waves and their effect on the index of refraction of the air. Note that I'm NOT talking about stacks that are venting steam, but smoke.

The same is true of cars. In the Denver metro area when I was growing up you could pretty much always see the smog haze hovering over any of the major highways and even major streets from miles away. Now, despite much heaver traffic in a much more densely populated metro area, you can very seldom see even a hint of it.

Have these controls cost money? Sure. But, by and large, they represented reasonable compromises in which the modest (and sometimes not so modest) costs where offset by significant benefits -- and benefits that did not rely on scare tactics to make people believe that unless we crash our economy the world will cease to exist.

 

Please, WBahn, allow me my hyperbole. I like my hyperbole!

 

Please, WBahn, allow me my hyperbole. I like my hyperbole!

Go for it!

 

Of course, there are always those doomsayers who preach that protecting the environment and its inhabitants will be an end to all economic activity and take away all the creature comforts that supposedly everyone craves. If the media ever actually did a comparison of how natural disasters compare to man-made disasters in terms of wildlife, those folks would be gravely disappointed to learn that habitat loss and pollution adversely affects wildlife far more than natural disasters. The eruption of Mt Saint Helens in 1980 killed thousand of animals in the blast area. In the 35 years since, pollution and habitat loss has killed many, many times more. Consider just a sampling of the effects: 2/3 of the world's coral reefs are dead or dying, nearly all marine life has experienced precipitous drops in numbers, especially large ocean predators, who's numbers are a fractionof what they were just a few years ago. Indeed, shark numbers are 1/10th what they were a century ago. In the remaining large fish population, many have alarming amounts of mercury in their bodies, so much in fact that public advisories have been released against eating certain species.

Sadly, marine life in the Gulf was already under tremendous stress before the spill due over fishing and pollution that enters the gulf from the Mississippi River. Farm runoff had created a huge oxygen depleted region in the area. The local fisheries had already been depleted of more then 60% of its stock simply by overfishing by the commercial seafood industry. The fish and sea mammal kill from the spill only added to the stress of the system.

In Florida, I lived near the 3rd largest lake in the state, lake Apopka. In the 40's and 50's the lake was one of the most desired fishing destinations in the country. More than 50 fish camps lined the shores. Its bottom was sandy and perfect for swimming and family activities. Now, because of pollution, the lake is dead. Nothing lives in the water except for alligators the state dumps there after removing them from populated areas. The once sandy lake bottom is now covered with black muck. The Indian river that runs along Florida's east coast which was a sportman's mecca for its intercoastal fishing has seen its sea life plummet to a fraction of what it once was. The sea grass beds, vital to sea life there have all but disappeared. And while I lived there, pollution in the river was responsible for mass die offs of fish and endangered Manatee.

2014 will likely go down as the hottest year on record. The average temperature in the last decade was higher then the previous decade, which were in turn higher then the previous one, and so on. The oceans are warmer than ever and increasingly acidic. So much for "no warming in the last 20 years."

But heck, don't let any of the bad news get you down, always remember that money is the only important thing in life. Everything else is just to be crapped on for the sake of wealth

 

Yep. Man, particularly America, is responsible for everything bad. Until we came along, no species ever went extinct and the climate was in perfect and unchanging balance at all times.