Discussion: Global Warming, Emission Standards, and Other Environmental Issues

[8wid]

Chevron takes full responsibility for Brazil oil spill

 

[8wid]

Indonesian park attempts to boost sea turtle population

 

[8wid]

Footage below is a little graphic!

Rhino Poaching: An African Tragedy. A Global Responsibility!

 

[Marx]

UPDATE: PRESIDENT OBAMA REJECTS KEYSTONE PIPELINE EXPANSION
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_new...ldiers-arrested-after-afghan-sex-abuse-report

 

[Paradoxium]

I wouldn't label it a environment issue. Personally my problem with it has nothing to do with the environment. The use of Eminent Domain being the big problem.

 

[Marx]

I wasn't sure where else to put it.

 

[Paradoxium]

There are a lot of STRONG non-environmental argument. Even stronger than then environmental one. Here have a gander, this site has some of them.

One big reason that may help build opposition to the Keystone construction is eminent domain. The fight against the Keystone XL pipeline has been mostly an environmental fight, but quite frankly, not everyone is an environmentalist and may not resonate with this message. However, eminent domain may just provide enough common ground for the environmentalist and non-environmentalist alike.

Forceful Takeover
Eminent domain is a forceful takeover of private personal property. Limited government individuals do not like government encroaching on their personal liberties, especially on their personal private property. But more so, landowners do not like their land being taken away from them by the government to be given to a private corporation. How would you like it if your land was forcibly stolen from you?

Take for instance, Randy Thompson, a Nebraska landowner featured in The New York Times. NYT reports that if Thompson did not sell his land, Keystone would use the force of eminent domain to secure an easement to his land. How can a company, not even based in the United States, use the U.S. Federal Government to seize land? He is only one of many individuals fighting the fight against eminent domain.

Furthermore, eminent domain is akin to a government subsidy for a corporation. Technically, no money is being taken from taxpayers and given to a private corporation as a subsidy. However, the use of eminent domain shares characteristics of a government corporate subsidy.

Keystone needs to build a pipeline across America from the Canada border to the Gulf of Mexico. In a free market, Keystone would have to negotiate one by one with each and every landowner along the pipeline’s path, from North Dakota all the way to Texas. If a landowner declines sale, there is no recourse that Keystone may take. It is the landowner’s private property, after all.

However, eminent domain changes the game. Keystone as a corporation can ask the government to use eminent domain, thus granting Keystone an easement or even direct rights to the land at “fair price.” But the question is, is that price “fair” to Keystone or the landowner?

More often than not, the price is unfair because landowners were not willing to sell in the first place. The only reason they are “selling” is because of the eminent domain. This is also where eminent domain is similar to a subsidy, because the Keystone buying price is much lower than the price at which the landowner is willing to sell. Without eminent domain, it would most likely be unprofitable for Keystone to build the thousand mile pipeline in the first place.

The whole shenanigan goes against everything diehard capitalist believes in. Even a mostly capitalist. Breach of private property and corporatism. The rightosphere and the supposed small gov't types have been pissing me off a lot lately. Their exploitation of this issue to knock on Obama really did me in. And you know, I am hardly a Obama fanboy.

 

[hippie_hunter]

UPDATE: PRESIDENT OBAMA REJECTS KEYSTONE PIPELINE EXPANSION
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_new...ldiers-arrested-after-afghan-sex-abuse-report

Stupid move by Obama. Very, very, very stupid move.

I wouldn't label it a environment issue. Personally my problem with it has nothing to do with the environment. The use of Eminent Domain being the big problem.

You think that's going to be mentioned at all? I doubt it.

 

[Paradoxium]

It's a pretty huge hole, violating private property rights. The whole entire project hinges on this alone.

 

[Paradoxium]

I get both views on environment and job creation (and not being reliant on certain countries) from the energy sector. But the use of eminent domain is going too far. I draw the line there.

 

[SuperT]

It wasn't a dumb move at all. The Rethugs set that ridiculous 60 day time limit for him to make a decision on the pipeline and they weren't able to gather enough research to know whether it was a good or bad decision. I personally think it's a bad just to create some temporary jobs? Not to mention to the environmental what with the talk about the aquifers and whatnot.

I did read that the company planned on resubmitting the proposal again. Maybe they can come up with a safer, more stable plan.

 

[hippie_hunter]

It wasn't a dumb move at all. The Rethugs set that ridiculous 60 day time limit for him to make a decision on the pipeline and they weren't able to gather enough research to know whether it was a good or bad decision. I personally think it's a bad just to create some temporary jobs? Not to mention to the environmental what with the talk about the aquifers and whatnot.

I did read that the company planned on resubmitting the proposal again. Maybe they can come up with a safer, more stable plan.

It was an utterly stupid move. The Republicans set him up in hopes that he would reject it and they could come up with the argument that when given the choice to create real jobs, he chose to side with liberal interest groups.

Instead of playing their little game and have it blow up in the Republicans' faces, he went along with it. While the Republicans may have lost the initial battle during the payroll tax debacle, they will most likely get the victory in the long run due to this.

 

[DACrowe]

I actually am surprised he rejected it. It could have created thousands of jobs in the short term, thereby giving the economy in those states a momentary boost, and would have only taken oil that is already drilled and will be burned in one place (the US) or another (China or some parts of Europe).

Still, it was a principled stand on his part, so I have a hard time taking him to task for it. But if everything is about political advantage....eh. I think coming out against SOPA at the apparent ire of the Hollywood elite and against those special interests will help him far more. At least until the attack ads in October, that is.

 

[hippie_hunter]

I think most people don't give a damn about SOPA. I certainly applaud him for doing the right thing by going up against his California donor base and opposing SOPA and PIPA though.

 

[Hobgoblin]

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/25/10853227-march-has-meant-6000-weather-records-broken

March has meant 6,000 weather records broken
By Chris Dolce, Jonathan Erdman, Nick Wiltgen, weather.com

We've seen an amazing, historic run of record warmth in March 2012. It's been the talk of towns from Minnesota and Michigan to Tennessee and Georgia for a couple of weeks now.

First, consider the sheer number of daily record highs either tied or broken over the past two weeks. The counts in the table below are courtesy of the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) since Mar. 9. Counts from Mar. 23 are still being tabulated and will be posted later.
Day # of Records
Fri. Mar. 9 101
Sat. Mar. 10 105
Sun. Mar. 11 189
Mon. Mar. 12 138
Tue. Mar. 13 218
Wed. Mar. 14 460
Thu. Mar. 15 662
Fri. Mar. 16 496
Sat. Mar. 17 565
Sun. Mar. 18 586
Mon. Mar. 19 510
Tue. Mar. 20 710
Wed. Mar. 21 575
Thu. Mar. 22 295
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If you pull out your calculator and add the numbers up from March 1 through March 22, the total exceeds 6,000! This speaks to the widespread nature and longevity of this warm spell. By the way, there have been only about 250 daily record lows during that same time, a ratio of roughly 24 record highs for every record low.

In a typical March, particularly in the nation's northern tier, you may see, perhaps, one or perhaps two days of record warmth before a sharp cold front brings that spring tease to a screeching halt. Not so in March 2012.

When considering monthly record highs, meaning the warmest temperature on record for the month of March, according to NCDC, there have been 430 such monthly record highs tied or broken!

International Falls, Minn., self-promoted as the "Icebox of the Nation", tied or broke daily record highs 12 of 13 days from Mar. 10-22. This includes a 79-degree reading on March 18, which was the warmest day ever recorded during March in International Falls.

Chicago, Ill., tied or set new daily record highs nine days in a row from March 14-22! In this streak, eight of the days were in the 80s, including an astounding 87-degree high on March 21. The National Weather Service in Chicago recently called the warm spell "historic" and something that is unlikely to be matched in our lifetime.

More top weather stories from weather.com

Wednesday, March 21, both Marquette, Mich., (81 degrees) and Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., (83 degrees) shattered their previous March record highs. In Marquette, it was their earliest-in-season 80+ degree day on record, breaking the old record by 22 days! Despite a shorter period of record in Marquette (records since 1961), that's still an amazing feat.

Thursday, March 22, Detroit, Mich., reached 86 degrees, setting an all-time record high for the month of March. The previous record was set just the day before. Prior to this March 2012 warm spell, the record was 84 degrees set in late March of 1945. If that wasn't enough, their 10-day streak with highs at least in the 70s was their longest such streak so early in the season, topping the previous record by over a month!
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Plotted on the interactive map here are the many records set for various cities in this mild March. Zoom in on the map and click on the red locator icons to view the record-breaking information for each location. You will find many cities that have set records for the warmest temperatures so early in the season, monthly records or longest streaks of warm weather so early in the season.

Below is a map of temperature departures from average for the first three weeks of March. Notice the massive swath of much warmer than average air from the Rockies east (brown, red, orange shadings). Many spots are 10 to 15 degrees above average for the month so far!

Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis are all currently seeing their warmest March on record with only a handful of days to go in the month. Records date back to the 1870s in all of these cities.

 

[SV Fan]

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/25/10853227-march-has-meant-6000-weather-records-broken

On the flip side it's been a year of record lows in Europe and Asia so I guess everything equals out.

 

[Hobgoblin]

I think it just means that we are having larger than average fluctuations in temperature across the globe. It was only two years ago that Europe and Russia were boiling, with a huge wildfire out of control across southern Russia.

 

[SV Fan]

I think it just means that we are having larger than average fluctuations in temperature across the globe. It was only two years ago that Europe and Russia were boiling, with a huge wildfire out of control across southern Russia.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/11/a-2000-year-global-temperature-record/

Here is a graph of the past 2000 years of Temperature Anomalies. When we get to 900s style Anomalies I'll start worrying(or more so 1600s style ones)

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

We had a crazy winter in Toronto this year - by which I mean we had no winter. From December to February there was barely ever snow. The first day of spring in March felt more like summer; the temperature was up to 24 degrees Celsius.

You can't necessarily draw conclusions about the climate from bizarre weather alone, but when you add it the record temperatures around the globe, the melting polar ice caps, the more powerful and frequent storms...it's pretty clear that the effects of climate change have already started.

 

[SV Fan]

You can't necessarily draw conclusions about the climate from bizarre weather alone

Well I think you can draw the conclusion that climate/weather changes(it's a rather obvious observation), now what causes that is a different question

I think my biggest problem with the theory, is I see major fear tactics used to try push it and that instantly turns me off. Here is a couple things that turned me off

1. Simple fact is if what they say is true, there will be places on this earth that will benefit positively from it. I never once see them mention that in there messages. I know if it's true in the big picture it will suck for alot of people but you can't say it's doom and gloom for everybody when that isn't most likely the truth

2. Polar Bears - they kept showing us this picture of a Polar Bear swimming saying they dieing off because of humans. Only problem is Polar Bear population has increased and Polar Bears actually would benefit from a slightly warmer climate since it gives them more time to hunt

3. The Sun - when I see a scientist say the Sun has no effect on the Earth temperature, then I can tell they are full of crap. When other planets and moons in our solar system have similar climate changes do you think there might be one common factor?

4. Weird Science - Al Gore promised us the Earth would heat up in a linear fashion, problem I had with this is with my limited science knowledge if the ice caps melted and the cold water mixed with the warm ocean, I knew this could cause weird weather patterns depending on current flow. Ironically my prediction might be right if you look at weather patterns of the past 10 years since Gore's movie, but question is why would my high school science knowledge be more right then so called experts who came up with that graph for him to show us. Somebody who had any knowledge of studying weather patterns probably could figure out how current flow could potentially effect certain areas

5. Ice Age fears of the 70s - That theory fell flat on it's ass. When you see a few people who were spear heading that movement sort of go into hibernation for 15 years then spearhead the global warming movement, it's hard to take them seriously.

I probably would be more open to the idea that humans are responsible if the people who are pushing it aren't so doom and gloom about it and were more honest about potential issues with the theory. To me Climate Change has become a theology, that if you don't agree with the guys at the top, they go out of there way to villifey you(even if somebody might have a good point). If they ever wanted a serious discussion about Climate change they need to get a bunch of scientists on both sides to discuss potential flaws(like a point/counter point type of meeting) instead it's more like if you don't agree with the so called majority they do everything to silence you. I remember 10 years ago it was no scientists deny Climate Change, now whenever I hear Gore talk he is like well only 2% deny it. I question what happened in 10 years that 2% changed there mind(I also question when he refers to scientists, does he mean all scientists in general or ones who specifically study weather/climate. Whenever he throws out any numbers I do believe he is talking about scientists in general, which to me comes off as distorting the facts because lets be honest here a scientist whose main field of study is the human body will have limited knowledge of weather patterns)

 

[Hobgoblin]

http://www.vancouversun.com/technol...light+global+warming+study/6399619/story.html

Nearly 140 years after Canadian-born scientist John Murray began gathering the first comprehensive data on sea water temperatures around the world, a team of U.S. and British researchers has revisited the pioneering discoveries from the famous 1872-76 voyage of the HMS Challenger to create the clearest picture yet of the steady warming trend now threatening the planet's marine environment.

The new study marks the second time in recent years that modern scientists have turned to 19th-century research by Murray — widely considered the founding father of oceanography — and his Challenger colleagues to gain fresh insights into the contemporary state of the seas.

In 2010, U.S. scientists who published a new calculation for the volume of water in the Earth's oceans — 1.332 billion cubic kilometres — were informed by HMS Challenger's original research on the question and paid homage to Murray for arriving at a nearly an identical estimate: 1.349 billion cubic kilometres.

And notably, when Canadian filmmaker James Cameron made his high-profile plunge last week to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the mini-sub that carried him there — Deepsea Challenger — and the "Challenger Deep" section of the trench that he reached in dramatic fashion were both named in honour of the HMS Challenger, whose scientists had conducted the first depth soundings at the site under Murray's direction.

In the latest findings, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists from the University of California's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the U.K. National Oceanography Centre compared the ocean-temperature data set compiled by the Challenger scientists with the automated measurements taken since 2004 by a planetwide network of 3,500 "Argo" ocean buoys.

The cross-century comparison showed an average warming on the surface of the ocean of about 0.59 C since the 1876 completion of the Challenger voyages, during which temperature measurements were laboriously taken by Murray's research team at more than 300 sea water-sampling stations around the globe.

While the Argo scientists automatically receive 100,000 readings a year from their robotic array of temperature and salinity sensors, the Challenger team spent more than three years and travelled about 130,000 kilometres to gather their data from thermometers attached to a huge length of rope that was lowered over the side of the ship and weighed down with a 50-kilogram stone.

The new study found that the average warming of sea water since the 1870s is about 0.39 C at a depth of 366 metres and 0.12 C at 914 metres, for an overall, multi-depth average increase in water temperature of about 0.33 C over the past 135-plus years.

That result implies "a centennial time scale for the present rate of global warming" rather than the five-decade-long trend previously known to science, the study concludes.

It "indicates that, globally, the oceans have been warming at least since the late-19th or early-20th centuries," the researchers state.

Project leader and Scripps' oceanographer Dean Roemmich told Postmedia News on Monday that the comparative study is "clear in emphasizing the significance of the Challenger Expedition with regard to its baseline measurements of ocean temperature."

He added in a summary of the findings that "the significance of the study is not only that we see a temperature difference that indicates warming on a global scale, but that the magnitude of the temperature change since the 1870s is twice that observed over the past 50 years."

The Nature Climate Change report pays special tribute to the researchers of HMS Challenger, whose published findings — compiled by Murray in the two decades following the expedition — were described by the Canadian scientist himself as "the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries."

The Challenger data set "was a landmark achievement in many respects," the newly published paper states. "With regard to climate and climate change, Challenger not only described the basic temperature stratification of the oceans, but provided a valuable baseline of 19th-century ocean temperature that, along with the modern Argo data set, establishes a lower bound on centennial-scale global ocean warming."

Murray, born in Cobourg, Ont., in 1841, left Canada at 17 to study in his parents' native Scotland, and the transatlantic voyage inspired his interest in ocean science.

By the time the British government approved the use of the HMS Challenger to explore the world's oceans and conduct an unprecedented inventory of marine life, Murray had emerged as a leading expert in the field.

The expedition's 10-day visit to Halifax in May 1873 also helped ignite interest in marine science in Canada.

Murray's role as a chief investigator aboard the Challenger and author of dozens of expedition studies in the years that followed earned him recognition as the father of oceanography — a word he coined and a discipline he shaped by writing many of its foundational texts.

 

[Hobgoblin]

League of Conservation Voters.

Mission: The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is a national non-profit organization that works to turn environmental values into national priorities. To secure the environmental future of our planet, LCV advocates for sound environmental policies, elects pro-environment candidates who will adopt and implement such policies, and provides state LCVs with the resources and tools to accomplish and sustain their mission.

http://www.lcv.org/

Just in case anyone is interested.

 

[SV Fan]

One of Climate Change Guru's says some interesting things

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_new...lock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.

I think this is the problem with the movement. basically the guys who spearheaded it, basically did it by trying to spread fear more then having a honest discussion about it

 

[Lighthouse]

Surprised there hasn't been more discussion in this thread.

 

[:eek:]

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) group is in the news again, surprising climate change skeptics with results from a new study that shows the earth has warmed 2.5 °F over the past 250 years, and 1.5 °F over the past fifty years, and that "essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases." Dr. Richard Muller, who heads the BEST team, now considers himself a "converted skeptic," which he wrote about in a New York Times op-ed on Saturday:

"Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."

Not only is the lead scientist of the project a former climate change skeptic, BEST itself is funded by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, an organization that is rooted deep in the oil industry and the manufactured doubt industry. Two years ago a report found that the Koch brothers outspent Exxon Mobile in science disinformation at a whopping $48.5 million since 1997. Despite the special interest of their funders, BEST has made it clear, both on their website and in the results they've come to, that funding sources will not play a role in the results of their research, and that they "will be presented with full transparency

Muller's research comes to essentially the same conclusion as similar well-known studies on the topic of global temperature rise. It attempts to address the question of attribution—how much has the globe warmed, and what is to blame? They found that solar activity relates very little to the fluctuations in temperature over the past 250 years, and that the warming is "almost entirely" due to greenhouse gas emissions, combined with some variability from volcanic eruptions. It's important to note that while Muller and his team found warming of 2.5 °F over the past 250 years, and 1.5 °F over the past fifty years, the IPCC did not find quite that much warming in their AR4 assessment.

BEST was in the news in October when they released results from their first independent study of surface temperature, which set out to address some common skeptic concerns about previous temperature reconstructions (e.g. NASA, NOAA, and HadCRU), including the urban heat island effect and the potential "cherry picking" of data. Both of these concerns were found to be non-issues. BEST concluded that the urban heat island effect does not contribute significantly to the land temperature rise. In fact, in their new study, they were able to reproduce the warming trend using nothing but rural stations.

BEST Part II doesn't necessarily bring anything new to the science as it currently exists; we've known for decades that the planet is warming and the cause is manmade. But in this case the scientific process played out the way it should: a skeptic of a certain scientific result took on the project, and was open and willing to accept whatever result the science gave him. We now have another batch of results in the group of well-known temperature reconstructions, funded by big-oil-interests, that tells us the planet is warming and that the cause is fossil fuel emissions.