Ohh I love math. The atmosphere has a mass of about 5.15×10^18 kg. Of that 0.039% is CO2. If we burn all the hydrocarbons in known reserves of the top 17 oil producing countries (1.3x10^12 bbl) assuming 443 kg of CO2 per bbl of oil (found online) and let's assume that all the H2O released falls as rain (making the water problem easier too!). Also, let's neglect the loss of oxygen from all that combustion since we have plenty of excess... So we have: 2x10^15 KG current mass of CO2 5.8x10^14 KG additional mass of CO2
So now with all that burned oil we are at 0.05% CO2 an increase of 0.01%. But you just said tiny percent changes aren't significant...
Here's my problems: 1) I don't find a big oil conspiracy any more convincing than a big science conspiracy. 2) The warming science may be settled, but there is a flaw in the science. It fundamentally cannot be tested. All of these predictions are based on models that are based on research and science, but we don't have a model that has actually produced predictive forecasting. Nor do I think we will ever be able to. The temperature fluctuations on the planet are based on tons of variables and human influence is a part of it, but how much a part changes depending on the other variables. 3) The part that really gets me is all the talk of horrible catastrophes. Humans have adapted to many changes and migrations throughout history. Now we are saying that a 10' ocean rise over 1000 years will be so horrible we must make changes today that will cause demonstrable harm. Also, where are the positives of global warming? It doesn't seem very scientific to research all this ocean depth/acidification/desertification/severe storms/whatever other disasters will happen if the planet gets warmer and leave out potential new farmland, longer growing seasons, increased crop production, new livable areas. It seems to me looking at a globe that there is far more landmass that can't sustain human settlement because it is too cold than there is because it's too hot. 4) 1000 years ago, there were little to no permanent human settlements on the coasts in North and South America. Today the population along the coasts in just the US is probably comparable to the world human population 1000 years ago. (actually I looked it up, looks like around 125 million in the US live in a coastal county and the estimated world population in the year 1000 was around 300 million, but still interesting point)
Right, it's even worse... They say it's not very bad now, and it won't get any worse in any of your lifetimes, but it'll get REALLY bad when no one can verify these claims. We SWEAR! The computer models say so!
Citation needed... In the US only 39% live in a county that borders an ocean. Of course, even the cover picture of this article shows people living on a coast that wouldn't be detrimentally affected by a 10' rise in sea level. Annnnnd, I doubt any of those structures will still be around in 1000 years. Of course that's America for you. Now Europe, those buildings probably will be around for another 1000 years. But I think the people will slowly move away as the coast move inland.
Bullshit... The Velcro was only flammable in a high O2 atmosphere. Pretty much anything made with hydrogen in it at all will burn in a high oxygen environment. Heck even non-hydrogen containing materials will burn well if the temps get hot enough.
1) I said safer, not 100% safe. Pipeline accidents do occur, environmental damage and death are consequences. 2) I specifically said crude oil and you respond with a comment about a natural gas pipeline accident.
Also, what would you do with all the fuel you just refined in North Dakota? You'd just have to build a pipeline to carry all the products to the rest of the nation instead...
North Dakota has a total of 80MBBL/day refining capacity. Louisiana has 3,310MBBL/day capacity. Texas also has a huge amount. Oh you want to build a new refinery? Would that be easier or harder than approval for a new pipeline? A new refinery hasn't been built in the US since 1976.
Spill detection is present on every pipeline, it's just a matter of how sensitive it is. It is in a pipeline's best interest to keep product in the pipe as a leak is lost product even if you didn't have to worry about disasters and cleanup.
Airplanes have the same problem as pipelines. A lot of them were made a long time ago, and people have been trying to string them along past their design lifespans. New pipelines are far safer than old pipelines. Trying to block construction or replacement of pipelines is counter to making pipeline disasters less likely.
Your linked article is by a guest contributor who doesn't actually debunk any of the data.
Under Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration requirements, rail operators must report all spills. Pipelines are only required to report those over five gallons.
It’s important to note that most rail spills are small and occur during the filling of tank cars. These spills, while reported, are cleaned up immediately. Pipeline spills more often are catastrophic events. When a pipeline ruptures, a tremendous amount of oil is released, sometimes in a remote or hard-to-access area.
So the argument is that most pipeline spills are catastrophic, but they don't count the non-catastrophic ones? Many of the pipeline related spills are also small spills that are cleaned up immediately at pipeline stations.
Even the units of measurement employed by the two industries betray the immense difference in scale between the two modes. For rail, crude oil is typically measured in gallons, while pipelines measure it in barrels. It takes 42 gallons of oil to equal one barrel.
Except the article that he is debunking uses units of ton-miles, and uses it consistently between transportation methods. The fact that pipelines use barrels and rail cars gallons has nothing to do with the actual amount of releases.
I'm not denying that we need both rail and pipelines to move crude. But you can't deny that pipelines are safer and that a new pipeline will reduce the demand for rail transportation.
Right, so gas prices are artificially low because you don't have to carry buckets of crude to your house and refine it yourself? Carbon dioxide is what is going to kill us all, not fire and oil spills? That's a very well reasoned argument you have there...
Not the most efficient method, and historically one of the worst environmentally and the most dangerous to large populations when there is a failure. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of hydro power, but it's not without severe disadvantages.
Here's a hint, the vast majority of pipelines are protected for hundreds of miles. They are buried underground! Trains travel above the ground where they are subject to weather, traffic, etc. Also, pipeline releases are easier to recover and clean up than rail accidents. The data doesn't lie.
Plenty of studies done... According to this one rail is about 4x more likely to have an incident per weight-mile. Which is still ahead of the 40x more likely when transported by road!
You're right, pipelines built in the 1930s do fail from time to time. Mainly because it's so hard to build new ones that pipeline companies try to run old pipelines at as high pressure as they can get away with. You should see the difference in how pipelines used to be constructed vs how they are built now. A new pipeline is an amazing feat of engineering. Old pipelines were just whatever pipe they could find laid in the ground.
To make an obligatory Slashdot car analogy: I am suggesting we make new planes so people will be able to travel safer than driving a car. You come back with "yeah, we've obviously never had major plane crashes".
You know, a PIPELINE would be a lot safer way of transporting crude oil around the country... Stopping the construction of pipelines results in more of these rail car accidents you know.
Let's celebrate with 8-16 characters that must include at least one capital, one number, and one symbol but not repeat any character more than twice. Ahh screw it, why don't we celebrate World Write Down Your Password On A Post-It Note Day?
Freedom of speech. Data is just speech between a server and a client. Why should ISPs limit or censor speech between two parties based on their content?
It's nice when you want to look at two things on two different screens to have two open windows (I'm looking at you fucking Microsoft Excel and Project). However, I find tabs to be the better organized on a single screen. I hate it when a new window opens up on top of something I was doing and in a random and unpredictable spot.
Gasses expand to fill entire volumes. Siphons transfer from one reservoir to another. You can't really have a gas reservoir. I guess if you had extremes of densities where you had two gasses that would stratify like maybe Sodium Hexafluoride in a Helium environment it might sort of work, but eventually the gas would expand out of both containers and fill the environment to equilibrium regardless of any sort of conduit in the environment connecting them.
In any case... I have no idea really. Googling "siphon with gasses" returns a whole bunch of stupid things about siphoning gasoline. I guess that's one more argument in favor of British English.
Logic fail if people with $1,000,000 dollar net worth are in the middle class that does not exclude you from the middle class if you have less than $1,000,000 net worth. Also, middle class has nothing to do with net worth, it's based on standard of living. People can have a negative net worth and still be considered in the middle class and someone whose stocks are worth tens of millions can be living in the middle class as well. I would bet that greater than 50% (i.e. the majority) of retirement aged people who have a middle class lifestyle have a greater than $1,000,000 net worth.
The way things are going, I fully expect to need $5,000,000 to retire with a middle class lifestyle. The government is printing money pretty darn fast. It can be hard to keep up.
Slashdot Mirror
Ohh I love math. The atmosphere has a mass of about 5.15×10^18 kg. Of that 0.039% is CO2. If we burn all the hydrocarbons in known reserves of the top 17 oil producing countries (1.3x10^12 bbl) assuming 443 kg of CO2 per bbl of oil (found online) and let's assume that all the H2O released falls as rain (making the water problem easier too!). Also, let's neglect the loss of oxygen from all that combustion since we have plenty of excess... So we have:
2x10^15 KG current mass of CO2
5.8x10^14 KG additional mass of CO2
So now with all that burned oil we are at 0.05% CO2 an increase of 0.01%. But you just said tiny percent changes aren't significant...
Here's my problems:
1) I don't find a big oil conspiracy any more convincing than a big science conspiracy.
2) The warming science may be settled, but there is a flaw in the science. It fundamentally cannot be tested. All of these predictions are based on models that are based on research and science, but we don't have a model that has actually produced predictive forecasting. Nor do I think we will ever be able to. The temperature fluctuations on the planet are based on tons of variables and human influence is a part of it, but how much a part changes depending on the other variables.
3) The part that really gets me is all the talk of horrible catastrophes. Humans have adapted to many changes and migrations throughout history. Now we are saying that a 10' ocean rise over 1000 years will be so horrible we must make changes today that will cause demonstrable harm. Also, where are the positives of global warming? It doesn't seem very scientific to research all this ocean depth/acidification/desertification/severe storms/whatever other disasters will happen if the planet gets warmer and leave out potential new farmland, longer growing seasons, increased crop production, new livable areas. It seems to me looking at a globe that there is far more landmass that can't sustain human settlement because it is too cold than there is because it's too hot.
4) 1000 years ago, there were little to no permanent human settlements on the coasts in North and South America. Today the population along the coasts in just the US is probably comparable to the world human population 1000 years ago. (actually I looked it up, looks like around 125 million in the US live in a coastal county and the estimated world population in the year 1000 was around 300 million, but still interesting point)
Hmm, those seem to all be years where we had digital thermometers...
Right, it's even worse... They say it's not very bad now, and it won't get any worse in any of your lifetimes, but it'll get REALLY bad when no one can verify these claims. We SWEAR! The computer models say so!
Citation needed... In the US only 39% live in a county that borders an ocean. Of course, even the cover picture of this article shows people living on a coast that wouldn't be detrimentally affected by a 10' rise in sea level. Annnnnd, I doubt any of those structures will still be around in 1000 years. Of course that's America for you. Now Europe, those buildings probably will be around for another 1000 years. But I think the people will slowly move away as the coast move inland.
Bullshit... The Velcro was only flammable in a high O2 atmosphere. Pretty much anything made with hydrogen in it at all will burn in a high oxygen environment. Heck even non-hydrogen containing materials will burn well if the temps get hot enough.
1) I said safer, not 100% safe. Pipeline accidents do occur, environmental damage and death are consequences.
2) I specifically said crude oil and you respond with a comment about a natural gas pipeline accident.
Also, what would you do with all the fuel you just refined in North Dakota? You'd just have to build a pipeline to carry all the products to the rest of the nation instead...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
North Dakota has a total of 80MBBL/day refining capacity. Louisiana has 3,310MBBL/day capacity. Texas also has a huge amount. Oh you want to build a new refinery? Would that be easier or harder than approval for a new pipeline? A new refinery hasn't been built in the US since 1976.
Never inspecting things is not allowed actually... http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/co...
Spill detection is present on every pipeline, it's just a matter of how sensitive it is. It is in a pipeline's best interest to keep product in the pipe as a leak is lost product even if you didn't have to worry about disasters and cleanup.
Airplanes have the same problem as pipelines. A lot of them were made a long time ago, and people have been trying to string them along past their design lifespans. New pipelines are far safer than old pipelines. Trying to block construction or replacement of pipelines is counter to making pipeline disasters less likely.
Your linked article is by a guest contributor who doesn't actually debunk any of the data.
Under Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration requirements, rail operators must report all spills. Pipelines are only required to report those over five gallons.
It’s important to note that most rail spills are small and occur during the filling of tank cars. These spills, while reported, are cleaned up immediately. Pipeline spills more often are catastrophic events. When a pipeline ruptures, a tremendous amount of oil is released, sometimes in a remote or hard-to-access area.
So the argument is that most pipeline spills are catastrophic, but they don't count the non-catastrophic ones? Many of the pipeline related spills are also small spills that are cleaned up immediately at pipeline stations.
Even the units of measurement employed by the two industries betray the immense difference in scale between the two modes. For rail, crude oil is typically measured in gallons, while pipelines measure it in barrels. It takes 42 gallons of oil to equal one barrel.
Except the article that he is debunking uses units of ton-miles, and uses it consistently between transportation methods. The fact that pipelines use barrels and rail cars gallons has nothing to do with the actual amount of releases.
I'm not denying that we need both rail and pipelines to move crude. But you can't deny that pipelines are safer and that a new pipeline will reduce the demand for rail transportation.
Right, so gas prices are artificially low because you don't have to carry buckets of crude to your house and refine it yourself? Carbon dioxide is what is going to kill us all, not fire and oil spills? That's a very well reasoned argument you have there...
Really? http://www.enbridge.com/Bakken... Maybe you need a reality reset.
Not the most efficient method, and historically one of the worst environmentally and the most dangerous to large populations when there is a failure. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of hydro power, but it's not without severe disadvantages.
http://www.manhattan-institute...
Here's a hint, the vast majority of pipelines are protected for hundreds of miles. They are buried underground! Trains travel above the ground where they are subject to weather, traffic, etc. Also, pipeline releases are easier to recover and clean up than rail accidents. The data doesn't lie.
http://www.manhattan-institute...
Plenty of studies done... According to this one rail is about 4x more likely to have an incident per weight-mile. Which is still ahead of the 40x more likely when transported by road!
I just hope you call before you dig... The biggest single cause of pipeline releases is 3rd party excavation damage:
http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/co...
You're right, pipelines built in the 1930s do fail from time to time. Mainly because it's so hard to build new ones that pipeline companies try to run old pipelines at as high pressure as they can get away with. You should see the difference in how pipelines used to be constructed vs how they are built now. A new pipeline is an amazing feat of engineering. Old pipelines were just whatever pipe they could find laid in the ground.
To make an obligatory Slashdot car analogy: I am suggesting we make new planes so people will be able to travel safer than driving a car. You come back with "yeah, we've obviously never had major plane crashes".
You know, a PIPELINE would be a lot safer way of transporting crude oil around the country... Stopping the construction of pipelines results in more of these rail car accidents you know.
Let's celebrate with 8-16 characters that must include at least one capital, one number, and one symbol but not repeat any character more than twice. Ahh screw it, why don't we celebrate World Write Down Your Password On A Post-It Note Day?
Freedom of speech. Data is just speech between a server and a client. Why should ISPs limit or censor speech between two parties based on their content?
He already tried turning Star Trek into Star Wars, now they are giving him that franchise to ruin too... Star Wars, now with 5000% more lens flare!
It's nice when you want to look at two things on two different screens to have two open windows (I'm looking at you fucking Microsoft Excel and Project). However, I find tabs to be the better organized on a single screen. I hate it when a new window opens up on top of something I was doing and in a random and unpredictable spot.
Gasses expand to fill entire volumes. Siphons transfer from one reservoir to another. You can't really have a gas reservoir. I guess if you had extremes of densities where you had two gasses that would stratify like maybe Sodium Hexafluoride in a Helium environment it might sort of work, but eventually the gas would expand out of both containers and fill the environment to equilibrium regardless of any sort of conduit in the environment connecting them.
In any case... I have no idea really. Googling "siphon with gasses" returns a whole bunch of stupid things about siphoning gasoline. I guess that's one more argument in favor of British English.
Logic fail if people with $1,000,000 dollar net worth are in the middle class that does not exclude you from the middle class if you have less than $1,000,000 net worth. Also, middle class has nothing to do with net worth, it's based on standard of living. People can have a negative net worth and still be considered in the middle class and someone whose stocks are worth tens of millions can be living in the middle class as well. I would bet that greater than 50% (i.e. the majority) of retirement aged people who have a middle class lifestyle have a greater than $1,000,000 net worth.
The way things are going, I fully expect to need $5,000,000 to retire with a middle class lifestyle. The government is printing money pretty darn fast. It can be hard to keep up.