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Strong Methane Emissions On the Siberian Shelf
rrohbeck writes "The Independent reports brand-new results of high concentrations of methane — 100x normal — above the sea surface over the Siberian continental shelf. A large number of methane plumes have been discovered bubbling up from the sea floor. This is probably due to methane clathrate, buried under the sea floor before the last ice age, breaking up as higher water temperatures melt the permafrost that had contained it."
Um.. what? You do know that the depths of the ocean tend to be very cold, right? Or are you suggesting that somehow the crust is thinning beneath the methane deposits and warming them, but at the same time there are no seismic events tied to this phenomenon, even though it is happening across a very large geographic region? Or are you just talking out your ass?
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
If you mean that the oceans and atmosphere have been cooling in the Northern hemisphere in the past few months, yes. It is Fall. If you mean they've been cooling for the part several years, no. Global temperatures are still increasing. It's called "global warming." It's why there have been record low amounts of Arctic ice the past several years.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Evolution has hardwired it into our brains: Killing fellow tribe members is bad for survival, ergo it will be perceived as immoral.
The Hebrew verb originally used is generally considered to be interpreted by "murder" (too lazy to look up a reference, but I've heard it a number of times) - so it is thou shalt not murder. No large scale social framework could function for a long period of time without the ability to kill. I guess you could point to certain eastern religions like the Jains as having functioned, but they generally get their asses handed to them throughout history.
It's the difference in interpretation of exactly what "murder" is that determines the destructive societies from the constructive ones.
Funny thing is that Islam has an even stronger moral code against killing innocents than Christianity, yet they are the ones which have the least problem with targeting purely civilian populations.
Perhaps this goes to show that it's not necessarily what your holy book says literally, it depends on who your contemporary religious leaders are.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
It does touch on a point I've wondered about: religion seems to be the foundation of much of our societal moral code. Without the framework of religion, why is it "wrong" to kill someone?
Reminds me of thing Nietzsche wrote about the madman in the market place, "now that we've killed God, which way is up or down?" This is known as the question of 'grounding' and is the subject of much debate in the study of ethics.
Religion does provide one ground. It is perhaps most effective because it relies on blind obedience and discourages thinking. "What is wrong with murder ... easy ... God says don't do it." But other grounds, more suitable to thinking creatures do exist. Kant's categorical imperative, for example, "Want to live in a world where every person tries kill every other? No? Then don't kill."
Putting aside the question of grounding, it is my contention that a Christian cannot appreciate the true gravity of murder in the way an atheist can. Christians have convinced themselves in the existence of an afterlife. For them killing a human is merely removing them from this world (the less important world). An atheist on the other hand realises that killing a human being is the snuffing out of an individual and unique consciousness for all time. A consciousness which longs for existence, just as much as our own does. It is this moral consideration which stops the atheist killing. Theists instead act only in obedience to their God motivated by ultimate personal reward. You might go even further and state that whereas atheists can truly be moral creatures, theists can't.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Ryskin is talking about methane being loaded with water droplets, since it came from the ocean. He says that the water makes humid methane heavier than air. That makes the methane pool up on the surface of the land. Since it's pools of humid methane, it could easily get into the range 5-15% if there is enough methane coming out of the ocean.
You would be able to breathe that air pretty easily. Methane doesn't smell, and is non-toxic. You would probably be able to smell other gases coming out of the ocean, like hydrogen sulphide. It would only kill you by suffocation in an area where the methane displaced most of the oxygen, so there wasn't enough oxygen to breathe. And if there's enough oxygen for you to breathe, there's enough to explode with the methane, if there's a spark or fire.
So, how much methane is in the ocean?
The fact that most Americans think this is funny is the problem. "If you do anything about global warming, you'll hurt my portfolio." Large-scale natural disasters in which whole ecosystems are destroyed are irrelevant, compared with a little make-believe system of measuring personal success vs. your neighbour. To quote someone famous, "Republicans are terrified of dying poor."
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
You are right in principle. However, the financial system is make-believe because it ignores the real cost of items. The cost of a tree is not just the cost of harvesting the tree, it is also the cost of not having the tree anymore--increased CO_2 in the air ((a) not sequestered by the tree and (b) produced by fossil-fuel--burning logging equipment), loss of topsoil due to erosion, loss of intangibles that are hard to put financial value on, like beauty... Gasoline ought to cost the full clean-up cost of the air that is destroyed (not just the oxygen consumed, but the cost of getting all the toxins, carcinogens, and whatnot out of the ground and air), etc. So yes, capitalism would be great--IF it accurately accounted for the real costs of things.
But these costs have only become apparent recently. When capitalism was invented a few thousand years ago, the cost of not having a tree anymore was irrelevant because there were so many trees (well, sort of--even back then they ran into numerous problems, but the problems were quite local). Now that there are 7e9 people in the world, everything is done on such a massive scale that even small per-capita incremental costs add up to, frankly, global ecological disaster. And our financial systems haven't caught up. Whether we can make them do so in time is up in the air. Pun intended.
So yes, capitalism is wonderful in theory, but as implemented, is make-believe.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."