There may not be practical privacy, but there's still a right to privacy and laws against spying.
Assume the worst, but don't be complacent and tolerant when it happens.
When walking the street at night in a bad neighborhood, I try to stay in the light and away from dark corners. Assuming the worst. If I am mugged or assualted, I'm still calling the cops.
Thanks, that's pretty neat, though it doesn't exactly answer the question.
Though now that I re-read the sentence in question, it says "capture energy from the tidal currents at ten times the speed of the actual stream velocity", I was missing the "of the actual stream velocity" part. That definitely makes it sound like they're saying the kite (and thus generator) moves at 10x the tidal speed, which for sure doesn't mean an equivalent increase in power generation. Though it can be close.
Why, yes, from economic activity derived from burning fossil fuels.
Yes, like essentially everything we do today, no matter if it is something that is trying to get us off of fossil fuels or not. Our economy is based on burning fossil fuels, ergo all economic activity is based on burning fossil fuels.
Spending some of that activity to stop using fossil fuels is, if you consider using fossil fuels bad, what we would call "intelligent".
We should be looking at truly sustainable energy solutions, not scams.
If they produce more energy in their lifetimes than they take to produce -- which, if the system works, they almost certainly will -- then it's not a scam, it's a viable energy source. The more of these we build, the less of our economic activity will be based on fossil fuels, and the problem in the first part of this post will be resolved.
Up-front costs can prevent the development of new technologies, even if in the longer term they are a net positive. Something can be economically viable (which is what it means to have a net positive return on investment) without necessarily being economically practical for a particular entity at a particular time. Subsidies offset this, and get us to the point where we are using fewer fossil fuels faster. This is a good thing.
If moon is doing the tide then how come there's high tide 2 times a month.
So actually sun contributes at least as much as the moon or a bit more.
No, the sun's effect is about half that of the moon. Though that's still significant.
But earths rotation and continents actually make it meaningful.
Earth's rotation is where the energy is actually coming from. It's why the earth is slowly losing rotational velocity to the tune of about ~15 microsecond longer day per year
The moon is orbiting the earth, i.e. doing nothing but falling. For that to be a source of energy, shouldn't the moon be coming closer and closer to the earth?
Actually what's happening is that the moon is getting farther away from the earth, gaining orbital velocity at the cost of earth's rotational velocity.
The source of energy is actually the earth's rotational energy, of which there is quite a bit.
Uh, nooooo, that's fire, one of the four fundamental elements. The match is earth, demonstrating how earth begets fire. Water quenches fire, yet fire also requires air and water both begets air and air begets water. This is the great mystery of the elements, and is precisely why Herschel was launched. It has already imaged large amounts of fire, earth, and water! The role of air in the cosmos is yet unknown, but hopefully this 'new phase of water' is a clue.
So I agree with people who ask: "why wasn't the containment thingy already built?". An answer of its: "not cost effective" doesn't cut the mustard for me.
When New Orleans was flooded the Army Corps of Engineers tried to fly that excuse as well!
Not cost effective to build a dike so maybe somehow it is cost effective to flood a city? My gawd. What sort of spaghetti logic is this?
See, you're not looking at it right.
You're saying okay, preventative measures or at least being prepared with an emergency plan costs (made up) $0.5 billion, the expected cost of a disaster occurring if we're not prepared is $20 billion times the probability of the disaster (which at least in the case of hurricanes, approaches 1 as time goes on). So, clearly doing nothing to prevent or prepare for disaster is the more costly option.
You're treating that probabilistic expected-cost calculation like it's a real thing you have to deal with. You know, like a sane person. But it's still just a hypothetical future! The kind that invites people, especially greedy people, to imagine the future is how they want it to be.
So instead, they say okay, the cost of prevention is $0.5 billion. But the cost of doing nothing, and praying that disaster doesn't strike, is between $0 and $20 depending on whether or not you do your praying in a church and put something in the offering plate. So, clearly, doing nothing and telling yourself it will all work out is the cheaper option.
No it doesn't make sense if you're rational and care about total costs to society. It can make a lot of sense if all you care about is keeping more money in the short term and hoping you can cash out and be free of responsibility before having to pay the piper. Of course explaining this logic after the fact of your prayers' failure to prevent hurricanes is apparent makes you look pretty stupid and greedy. As it should. But still.:)
Here is one from back in April. Pardon me if projections 3 days out are taken with some degree of skepticism.
My pardon. Being skeptical of what is basically a meteorological forecast is totally understandable. You're going further and predicting that it won't happen, that's fine, that's your opinion. My opinion is that it makes sense to prepare ourselves for the worst reasonable case, and there is undeniably a reasonable potential for ecological disaster from this spill as the history of oil spills makes imminently clear.
Of course here we are both talking like this is a fixed-size spill, like the fate of the oil currently on the surface and thus near-term weather is all that matters, when the oil is still spewing. Let's talk about what's going to happen in the aftermath of the spill when it's actually after.
Important for Brown Pelicans living in that area. The world-wide population of the Brown Pelican is around 650,000 and it is distributed throughout coastal areas of both North and South America. It is not endangered or at risk as a species by this oil spill. The article you linked is very much missing a lot of information. In fact this bird disappeared completely from Louisiana once before and came back.
You're missing a lot of information that wasn't in the WP article you just read. Pelicans migrate. Birds from all along the eastern seaboard will nest along the Gulf coast -- are currently nesting. The reason they vanished from Louisiana was because the species nearly went extinct, and it's only there now because of human reintroduction efforts. Pelicans are still recovering. Many animals that are taken off the endangered species list end up right back on it, should unfortunate factors turn against it. Especially things that occur when they're nesting, which is now. If a lot of pelicans die because they're trying to feed in oil-slick-covered waters (note this doesn't require the slick reach shore), and thus their breeding season isn't successful, that weakens the recovery, and leaves them vulnerable to other factors that might not be as bad otherwise, like a bad hurricane season. You're right that possibility doesn't threaten the entire species directly, and I was not trying to say it does. But it does affect the recovery and stability of the whole north east region's population.
Which is important. Brown pelicans, plus countless other seabirds and if we're unlucky shorebirds and other animals that will be affected by the spill play important roles in the ecosystems in which they live. Unbalancing those ecosystems puts them under further stress and makes them vulnerable to further industrial accidents or natural disasters. Nature is resilient but that resilience is not infinite, and individual species can and do go extinct. Replacements for their ecological niches don't magically reappear; recovery can occur over periods far longer than human timescales.
Just this past weekend I had face-to-face conversations with actual ornithologists experienced with endangered species recovery programs. They were concerned, ergo I am as well. You're not, but that has nothing to do with a well-informed opinion on the risk factors to the brown pelican. It's because you apparently aren't concerned with anything less than the complete collapse of the global biosphere. Well, real conservation has to start long before that's a realistic possibility or it's long too late.
Here is a study of a natural seep in California that totally refutes your statement.
Here's a better version where the graphic actually works which I read shortly before making those statements. It's funny because it does refute the part about there not being satellite-visible slicks, while simultaneously supporting the important point which is that the scale is vastly smaller than the major human-caused spills, and suggesting that biodegredation in the sediments as the oil
It's a noble idea to get unfettered, free access to everyone, but if you want to keep business in the loop, you're either going to get extremely draconian with laws and enforcement or you'll have to give up trying to police them altogether.
Free Internet access isn't the big deal here as far as I'm concerned. Libraries provide free Internet access, and while like you say the internet isn't needed, neither are books technically speaking. Having information available for free is a good thing. It's just not something I think we need to be spending a lot of energy providing with tax money and regulations and what not.
Having a Free Internet, on the other hand, is of the utmost importance to me.
I have never really gotten the mentality that reasons that "nature", as in life on earth, will be okay in the long term, ergo we don't have to worry or do anything.
It's not like they're the only ones either. Birds, ants, spiders, gofers, and a whole lot more build structures to live more comfortably in. Humans need to stop thinking they are so special.
Well I figure if you can consider any kind of animal "special"*, then you certainly have to acknowledge that humans are special too.
Lots of animals dig burrows or construct nests, but few modify their environment to the extent of the beaver, and obviously humans are orders of magnitude beyond that. Opposable thumbs and big brains are pretty neat too. There's no other species on earth quite like homo sapien and there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that.
* And I certainly do find plenty of them to be special. I find the mimicry of the Liar Bird special, along with the amazing plumage of the Painted Bunting, the underbite bill of the Black Skimmer, the speed of the cheetah, the songs of the whale, the courtship rituals of the Bower Bird, a whole range of aspects of cephalopods like intelligence, dexterity, camouflage, and communication abilities, and so on and so on...
Yeah, I always thought Hoover was impressive for it's height, not width. And WP says it was the highest dam in the US when built (and is now the 2nd highest). Dunno about worldwide, but really, I don't care exactly, it's a tall dam in any case. Let's see some stupid beaver build a damn over 700 ft tall!
Meanwhile, that smart kid at a competing lab who has the intelligence to make an even better discovery doesn't see the data and can't run the experiment/analysis until it's far too late, and the world has committed itself to bad policies based on bad science.
You mean a smart kid who thinks they could do better, and much prefers just leaning back and thinking that while telling themselves that they can't prove it because the data isn't available, instead of actually looking for the data and realizing that the vast majority of it is in fact there.
Because then they'd have to actually show their cards and demonstrate their superior intellect by coming up with a better theory that matches the data. And if they can't, they'd have to either admit they aren't as smart as they thought they were, or that when smart people look at the data they often arrive at the same conclusion.
I'm not going to comment on whether this specific case is valid or not, but openness is requisite!
That's cool, but I am. The is a vast amount of data out there, from a wide variety of sources, that is available to those who are actually interested in doing research. And while many scientists of significant intelligence have tried to devise alternative theories, none have been able to explain the data without including anthropogenic sources as well as those that do. And no attempt to explain the data without including the factors behind the hypothesize anthropogenic sources (i.e. CO2 as greenhouse gas) has come close.
Your point is that openness is important in research, and that's absolutely true. Closed research, to the extent that it exists, is bad and the practice should be stopped; again absolutely true. Certainly science in general and climate research in specific are hardly perfect in this respect. Yet the degree of openness is much higher than many critics believe, and the results of that open research more difficult to refute.
There is no particular evidence that the oil spill is inexorably destined to reach land.
It's not inexorable, but it's predicted to hit land in the next 3 days as winds turn unfavorable.
And likewise calling it a world changing environmental catastrophe is vastly premature when the evidence of damage is slight indeed.
Good thing I'm not then.
And talking about "evidence of damage" as if present damage is all that matters and the future need not be considered is retarded.
The potential for damage is extremely high, and is what we are all worried about. Hopefully you can at least comprehend that.
I'll be positively ecstatic if your prediction comes true, the slick never hits land, and nothing bad happens.
What will you say if it hits the shores and contaminates the estuaries and an already shrinking ecosystem is further damaged?
Oh poppycock. This does not endanger the Brown Pelican - a bird whose range covers the east, gulf and west coasts of the US, and extends all the way south to Chile.
Poppycock yourself. Do you understand that the gulf coast is an important breeding area for the pelican? Do you understand that when an animal just last year came off the endangered species list, that significant damage in the breeding season could put it right back on? But I guess because you can google up their range, you know better than the experts
Filtered through sediments? Nonsense. You can see globs of it rising to the surface in seepage areas.
Which are not exclusive in any way, and implying so is nonsense. Much of the oil is filtered by the sediment, so only some globs up. The fact that it's globs and not a continuous stream, and that despite 2,000 barrels a day being leaked there are not oil slicks visible by satellite, puts the lie to the idea that the natural seepage and this disaster are in any way comparable.
Nature and ecosystems are not static; they are in constant flux and have a high degree of resiliency and adaptability. The only real danger is that man's population growth extends to a point where it strips the planet of its biosphere to the point where recovery in not possible.
No shit they aren't static and they do have resilience, but they also aren't immortal! Plenty of ecosystems have completely ceased to be in the past, some ecosystems are vanishing right out from under our noses! We have recorded the extinction of a wide variety of animals -- ones with ranges as wide as the Brown Pelican -- because individual species are certainly not as resilient as entire ecosystems, yet the loss of individual species can affect the ecosystem as a whole.
And in what universe do ecological disasters like this not contribute to the stresses on the biosphere that may push it past the point of recovery? Do you think the mere existence of too many humans is going to cause the collapse? Obviously not. Obviously you think that humans consuming the resources of the earth, stripping the oceans of fish and the land of forests and the Great Plains of resources in the soils and so on, will cause collapse.
Trying to separate this disaster from that, when it is in fact a symptom of our growing demand for resources, is ludicrous and contrary to your own line of reasoning.
Talking only about population, and not how the population manages their resources, despite some of the most polluting and most resource intensive societies being population-negative, is just silly.
And the silliest thing of all is saying that nature itself, and to a degree specific ecosystems, are resilient, by way of implying that this negates the risk to ourselves if too many of these ecosystems are damaged. Have you not realized that one of nature's ways of adapting is by letting certain problematic species go extinct?
Otherwise no significant oil contamination in ANY sensitive marshes or wetlands.
YET. Calling the matter closed when the vast majority of the oil spill has yet to reach shore is vastly too premature.
The fact is that oil is itself a product of natural biological processes, and nature does have mechanisms for dealing with it over time.
"Nature" has a mechanism for dealing with it, and the operative term is "over time". The Brown Pelican, which only just recently was taken off the endangered species list, does not.
The Gulf itself is naturally and continuously contaminated by seepage from oil deposits, to the tune of an estimated 2,000 barrels a day. Every day. Over a history of millions of years.
And over the entire gulf. And filtered through ground sediments, not pumped up at high pressure through a bore hole. Really, people keep bringing up natural seepage, but it really just shows the contrast between nature and off shore oil rigs.
The fact is that once this spill is contained the ecosystem will recover. It might seem to take forever if you are a fisherman working those waters, but to call it an ecological disaster is just silly.
"Nature" will recover. The ecosystem, as in the particular ecosystem that exists there today, may not. Nature has recovered from the annihilation of over 50% of all species in a (geologically) brief period of time, but plenty of ecosystems were lost in the process.
The problem with your assumption is that this is destroying an ecosystem. Do you even know what crude oil is? It's a naturally occurring, additive free, organic substance. It doesn't rampantly kill life on contact like say, mustard gas.
It's not an assumption, because this is not the first oil spill ever.
And yes I know what crude oil is, do you know that "naturally occurring, additive free, organic substance" and "harmless" are not adjectives?
Nobody is claiming it's going to instantly kill anything on contact. But if you had any idea of the environmental damage caused by previous spills, you wouldn't be talking like this "naturally occurring" substance isn't going to cause any problems in the quantities and concentrations here. Go ask an actual biologist or environmental scientist or anyone who has actually studied the impact of oil spills if they're concerned about this "organic substance". If they say that yes they are, make sure to remind them that the oil is additive free!
You realize that article is talking about oil seeping out over an extended period of time, filtered through and partially biodegraded passing through ocean floor sediments before it even reaches the ocean water? Not pumped out through a cleanly bored holed designed to maximize pressure and thus output. The Exxon Valdez spill wouldn't have been a big disaster if the oil had been leaked out slowly over twenty years, and 11-110 of them wouldn't be a big issue on the time scales it took it to reach that level of concentration in the soil.
It does kill some animals fairly quickly, but it also feeds algae and other microorganisms as well as plant life on the shore. I expect that the "fallout" from this spill will hurt the fish and shrimp industries this year, but in the coming years, they will have bumper crops. I'm not saying this isn't an environmental incident, I just fail to see the doomsday scenarios that everyone is talking about.
Yeah, now who's making assumptions? Fail is the operative word here. Here's a couple links: http://www.answers.com/topic/exxon-valdez-oil-spill and http://www.eoearth.org/article/exxon_valdez_oil_spill showing how the environmental impact and disruption of ecosystems was ongoing ten and even twenty years later. There's plenty more on teh googles. Fishing was disrupted for multiple years, and catches have never recovered. Mortality remains high among contaminated fish and other animals.
It's not about doomsday from one spill, it's about damage to ecosystems that are already stressed. It's about idiots saying that it's not such a big deal so lets not stop doing it, ensuring that there will be subsequent stresses.
Slashdot Mirror
There may not be practical privacy, but there's still a right to privacy and laws against spying.
Assume the worst, but don't be complacent and tolerant when it happens.
When walking the street at night in a bad neighborhood, I try to stay in the light and away from dark corners. Assuming the worst. If I am mugged or assualted, I'm still calling the cops.
It just makes me think of Bart Simpson:
"I didn't do it.
Nobody saw me do it.
You can't prove anything."
Not my fault. If you'd power your atomic clock with a renewable energy source, like hamsters or grad students, then you wouldn't have this problem!
Thanks, that's pretty neat, though it doesn't exactly answer the question.
Though now that I re-read the sentence in question, it says "capture energy from the tidal currents at ten times the speed of the actual stream velocity", I was missing the "of the actual stream velocity" part. That definitely makes it sound like they're saying the kite (and thus generator) moves at 10x the tidal speed, which for sure doesn't mean an equivalent increase in power generation. Though it can be close.
Why, yes, from economic activity derived from burning fossil fuels.
Yes, like essentially everything we do today, no matter if it is something that is trying to get us off of fossil fuels or not. Our economy is based on burning fossil fuels, ergo all economic activity is based on burning fossil fuels.
Spending some of that activity to stop using fossil fuels is, if you consider using fossil fuels bad, what we would call "intelligent".
We should be looking at truly sustainable energy solutions, not scams.
If they produce more energy in their lifetimes than they take to produce -- which, if the system works, they almost certainly will -- then it's not a scam, it's a viable energy source. The more of these we build, the less of our economic activity will be based on fossil fuels, and the problem in the first part of this post will be resolved.
Up-front costs can prevent the development of new technologies, even if in the longer term they are a net positive. Something can be economically viable (which is what it means to have a net positive return on investment) without necessarily being economically practical for a particular entity at a particular time. Subsidies offset this, and get us to the point where we are using fewer fossil fuels faster. This is a good thing.
Well we were making different assumptions then. BTW that link is busted. :/
If moon is doing the tide then how come there's high tide 2 times a month.
So actually sun contributes at least as much as the moon or a bit more.
No, the sun's effect is about half that of the moon. Though that's still significant.
But earths rotation and continents actually make it meaningful.
Earth's rotation is where the energy is actually coming from. It's why the earth is slowly losing rotational velocity to the tune of about ~15 microsecond longer day per year
Or assuming they're talking about power generated, not angular velocity of the generator.
The moon is orbiting the earth, i.e. doing nothing but falling. For that to be a source of energy, shouldn't the moon be coming closer and closer to the earth?
Actually what's happening is that the moon is getting farther away from the earth, gaining orbital velocity at the cost of earth's rotational velocity.
The source of energy is actually the earth's rotational energy, of which there is quite a bit.
No, power is measured in joules/second. They're both rates. 10x higher speed means 10x higher rate.
It's not the best choice of words, but it works okay I guess. :/
In the dramatic pause that follows, from somewhere in the vast audience, is heard the cry: "Nerd!"
My netbook fell off a cliff and really was destroyed, you insensitive clod!
And the iPad has no alibi, I notice. Hmmm...
Uh, nooooo, that's fire, one of the four fundamental elements. The match is earth, demonstrating how earth begets fire. Water quenches fire, yet fire also requires air and water both begets air and air begets water. This is the great mystery of the elements, and is precisely why Herschel was launched. It has already imaged large amounts of fire, earth, and water! The role of air in the cosmos is yet unknown, but hopefully this 'new phase of water' is a clue.
So I agree with people who ask: "why wasn't the containment thingy already built?". An answer of its: "not cost effective" doesn't cut the mustard for me.
When New Orleans was flooded the Army Corps of Engineers tried to fly that excuse as well!
Not cost effective to build a dike so maybe somehow it is cost effective to flood a city? My gawd. What sort of spaghetti logic is this?
See, you're not looking at it right.
You're saying okay, preventative measures or at least being prepared with an emergency plan costs (made up) $0.5 billion, the expected cost of a disaster occurring if we're not prepared is $20 billion times the probability of the disaster (which at least in the case of hurricanes, approaches 1 as time goes on). So, clearly doing nothing to prevent or prepare for disaster is the more costly option.
You're treating that probabilistic expected-cost calculation like it's a real thing you have to deal with. You know, like a sane person. But it's still just a hypothetical future! The kind that invites people, especially greedy people, to imagine the future is how they want it to be.
So instead, they say okay, the cost of prevention is $0.5 billion. But the cost of doing nothing, and praying that disaster doesn't strike, is between $0 and $20 depending on whether or not you do your praying in a church and put something in the offering plate. So, clearly, doing nothing and telling yourself it will all work out is the cheaper option.
No it doesn't make sense if you're rational and care about total costs to society. It can make a lot of sense if all you care about is keeping more money in the short term and hoping you can cash out and be free of responsibility before having to pay the piper. Of course explaining this logic after the fact of your prayers' failure to prevent hurricanes is apparent makes you look pretty stupid and greedy. As it should. But still. :)
Here is one from back in April. Pardon me if projections 3 days out are taken with some degree of skepticism.
My pardon. Being skeptical of what is basically a meteorological forecast is totally understandable. You're going further and predicting that it won't happen, that's fine, that's your opinion. My opinion is that it makes sense to prepare ourselves for the worst reasonable case, and there is undeniably a reasonable potential for ecological disaster from this spill as the history of oil spills makes imminently clear.
Of course here we are both talking like this is a fixed-size spill, like the fate of the oil currently on the surface and thus near-term weather is all that matters, when the oil is still spewing. Let's talk about what's going to happen in the aftermath of the spill when it's actually after.
Important for Brown Pelicans living in that area. The world-wide population of the Brown Pelican is around 650,000 and it is distributed throughout coastal areas of both North and South America. It is not endangered or at risk as a species by this oil spill. The article you linked is very much missing a lot of information. In fact this bird disappeared completely from Louisiana once before and came back.
You're missing a lot of information that wasn't in the WP article you just read. Pelicans migrate. Birds from all along the eastern seaboard will nest along the Gulf coast -- are currently nesting. The reason they vanished from Louisiana was because the species nearly went extinct, and it's only there now because of human reintroduction efforts. Pelicans are still recovering. Many animals that are taken off the endangered species list end up right back on it, should unfortunate factors turn against it. Especially things that occur when they're nesting, which is now. If a lot of pelicans die because they're trying to feed in oil-slick-covered waters (note this doesn't require the slick reach shore), and thus their breeding season isn't successful, that weakens the recovery, and leaves them vulnerable to other factors that might not be as bad otherwise, like a bad hurricane season. You're right that possibility doesn't threaten the entire species directly, and I was not trying to say it does. But it does affect the recovery and stability of the whole north east region's population.
Which is important. Brown pelicans, plus countless other seabirds and if we're unlucky shorebirds and other animals that will be affected by the spill play important roles in the ecosystems in which they live. Unbalancing those ecosystems puts them under further stress and makes them vulnerable to further industrial accidents or natural disasters. Nature is resilient but that resilience is not infinite, and individual species can and do go extinct. Replacements for their ecological niches don't magically reappear; recovery can occur over periods far longer than human timescales.
Just this past weekend I had face-to-face conversations with actual ornithologists experienced with endangered species recovery programs. They were concerned, ergo I am as well. You're not, but that has nothing to do with a well-informed opinion on the risk factors to the brown pelican. It's because you apparently aren't concerned with anything less than the complete collapse of the global biosphere. Well, real conservation has to start long before that's a realistic possibility or it's long too late.
Here is a study of a natural seep in California that totally refutes your statement.
Here's a better version where the graphic actually works which I read shortly before making those statements. It's funny because it does refute the part about there not being satellite-visible slicks, while simultaneously supporting the important point which is that the scale is vastly smaller than the major human-caused spills, and suggesting that biodegredation in the sediments as the oil
It's a noble idea to get unfettered, free access to everyone, but if you want to keep business in the loop, you're either going to get extremely draconian with laws and enforcement or you'll have to give up trying to police them altogether.
Free Internet access isn't the big deal here as far as I'm concerned. Libraries provide free Internet access, and while like you say the internet isn't needed, neither are books technically speaking. Having information available for free is a good thing. It's just not something I think we need to be spending a lot of energy providing with tax money and regulations and what not.
Having a Free Internet, on the other hand, is of the utmost importance to me.
But I already fight AIDS at home by engaging in an alternative to one of the most common transmission methods.
Why, I've probably prevented over 100 cases of HIV in just this year to date!
Indeed.
I have never really gotten the mentality that reasons that "nature", as in life on earth, will be okay in the long term, ergo we don't have to worry or do anything.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a "beaver dam" commonly called a "diaphragm"?
It's not like they're the only ones either. Birds, ants, spiders, gofers, and a whole lot more build structures to live more comfortably in. Humans need to stop thinking they are so special.
Well I figure if you can consider any kind of animal "special"*, then you certainly have to acknowledge that humans are special too.
Lots of animals dig burrows or construct nests, but few modify their environment to the extent of the beaver, and obviously humans are orders of magnitude beyond that. Opposable thumbs and big brains are pretty neat too. There's no other species on earth quite like homo sapien and there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that.
* And I certainly do find plenty of them to be special. I find the mimicry of the Liar Bird special, along with the amazing plumage of the Painted Bunting, the underbite bill of the Black Skimmer, the speed of the cheetah, the songs of the whale, the courtship rituals of the Bower Bird, a whole range of aspects of cephalopods like intelligence, dexterity, camouflage, and communication abilities, and so on and so on...
Yeah, I always thought Hoover was impressive for it's height, not width. And WP says it was the highest dam in the US when built (and is now the 2nd highest). Dunno about worldwide, but really, I don't care exactly, it's a tall dam in any case. Let's see some stupid beaver build a damn over 700 ft tall!
Meanwhile, that smart kid at a competing lab who has the intelligence to make an even better discovery doesn't see the data and can't run the experiment/analysis until it's far too late, and the world has committed itself to bad policies based on bad science.
You mean a smart kid who thinks they could do better, and much prefers just leaning back and thinking that while telling themselves that they can't prove it because the data isn't available, instead of actually looking for the data and realizing that the vast majority of it is in fact there.
Because then they'd have to actually show their cards and demonstrate their superior intellect by coming up with a better theory that matches the data. And if they can't, they'd have to either admit they aren't as smart as they thought they were, or that when smart people look at the data they often arrive at the same conclusion.
I'm not going to comment on whether this specific case is valid or not, but openness is requisite!
That's cool, but I am. The is a vast amount of data out there, from a wide variety of sources, that is available to those who are actually interested in doing research. And while many scientists of significant intelligence have tried to devise alternative theories, none have been able to explain the data without including anthropogenic sources as well as those that do. And no attempt to explain the data without including the factors behind the hypothesize anthropogenic sources (i.e. CO2 as greenhouse gas) has come close.
Your point is that openness is important in research, and that's absolutely true. Closed research, to the extent that it exists, is bad and the practice should be stopped; again absolutely true. Certainly science in general and climate research in specific are hardly perfect in this respect. Yet the degree of openness is much higher than many critics believe, and the results of that open research more difficult to refute.
There is no particular evidence that the oil spill is inexorably destined to reach land.
It's not inexorable, but it's predicted to hit land in the next 3 days as winds turn unfavorable.
And likewise calling it a world changing environmental catastrophe is vastly premature when the evidence of damage is slight indeed.
Good thing I'm not then.
And talking about "evidence of damage" as if present damage is all that matters and the future need not be considered is retarded.
The potential for damage is extremely high, and is what we are all worried about. Hopefully you can at least comprehend that.
I'll be positively ecstatic if your prediction comes true, the slick never hits land, and nothing bad happens.
What will you say if it hits the shores and contaminates the estuaries and an already shrinking ecosystem is further damaged?
Oh poppycock. This does not endanger the Brown Pelican - a bird whose range covers the east, gulf and west coasts of the US, and extends all the way south to Chile.
Poppycock yourself. Do you understand that the gulf coast is an important breeding area for the pelican? Do you understand that when an animal just last year came off the endangered species list, that significant damage in the breeding season could put it right back on? But I guess because you can google up their range, you know better than the experts
Filtered through sediments? Nonsense. You can see globs of it rising to the surface in seepage areas.
Which are not exclusive in any way, and implying so is nonsense. Much of the oil is filtered by the sediment, so only some globs up. The fact that it's globs and not a continuous stream, and that despite 2,000 barrels a day being leaked there are not oil slicks visible by satellite, puts the lie to the idea that the natural seepage and this disaster are in any way comparable.
Nature and ecosystems are not static; they are in constant flux and have a high degree of resiliency and adaptability. The only real danger is that man's population growth extends to a point where it strips the planet of its biosphere to the point where recovery in not possible.
No shit they aren't static and they do have resilience, but they also aren't immortal! Plenty of ecosystems have completely ceased to be in the past, some ecosystems are vanishing right out from under our noses! We have recorded the extinction of a wide variety of animals -- ones with ranges as wide as the Brown Pelican -- because individual species are certainly not as resilient as entire ecosystems, yet the loss of individual species can affect the ecosystem as a whole.
And in what universe do ecological disasters like this not contribute to the stresses on the biosphere that may push it past the point of recovery? Do you think the mere existence of too many humans is going to cause the collapse? Obviously not. Obviously you think that humans consuming the resources of the earth, stripping the oceans of fish and the land of forests and the Great Plains of resources in the soils and so on, will cause collapse.
Trying to separate this disaster from that, when it is in fact a symptom of our growing demand for resources, is ludicrous and contrary to your own line of reasoning.
Talking only about population, and not how the population manages their resources, despite some of the most polluting and most resource intensive societies being population-negative, is just silly.
And the silliest thing of all is saying that nature itself, and to a degree specific ecosystems, are resilient, by way of implying that this negates the risk to ourselves if too many of these ecosystems are damaged. Have you not realized that one of nature's ways of adapting is by letting certain problematic species go extinct?
Otherwise no significant oil contamination in ANY sensitive marshes or wetlands.
YET. Calling the matter closed when the vast majority of the oil spill has yet to reach shore is vastly too premature.
The fact is that oil is itself a product of natural biological processes, and nature does have mechanisms for dealing with it over time.
"Nature" has a mechanism for dealing with it, and the operative term is "over time". The Brown Pelican, which only just recently was taken off the endangered species list, does not.
The Gulf itself is naturally and continuously contaminated by seepage from oil deposits, to the tune of an estimated 2,000 barrels a day. Every day. Over a history of millions of years.
And over the entire gulf. And filtered through ground sediments, not pumped up at high pressure through a bore hole. Really, people keep bringing up natural seepage, but it really just shows the contrast between nature and off shore oil rigs.
The fact is that once this spill is contained the ecosystem will recover. It might seem to take forever if you are a fisherman working those waters, but to call it an ecological disaster is just silly.
The Prince William Sound ecosystem has yet to fully recover.
"Nature" will recover. The ecosystem, as in the particular ecosystem that exists there today, may not. Nature has recovered from the annihilation of over 50% of all species in a (geologically) brief period of time, but plenty of ecosystems were lost in the process.
The problem with your assumption is that this is destroying an ecosystem. Do you even know what crude oil is? It's a naturally occurring, additive free, organic substance. It doesn't rampantly kill life on contact like say, mustard gas.
It's not an assumption, because this is not the first oil spill ever.
And yes I know what crude oil is, do you know that "naturally occurring, additive free, organic substance" and "harmless" are not adjectives?
Nobody is claiming it's going to instantly kill anything on contact. But if you had any idea of the environmental damage caused by previous spills, you wouldn't be talking like this "naturally occurring" substance isn't going to cause any problems in the quantities and concentrations here. Go ask an actual biologist or environmental scientist or anyone who has actually studied the impact of oil spills if they're concerned about this "organic substance". If they say that yes they are, make sure to remind them that the oil is additive free!
Oil naturally leaks in plenty of places on the planet. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513130944.htm
You realize that article is talking about oil seeping out over an extended period of time, filtered through and partially biodegraded passing through ocean floor sediments before it even reaches the ocean water? Not pumped out through a cleanly bored holed designed to maximize pressure and thus output. The Exxon Valdez spill wouldn't have been a big disaster if the oil had been leaked out slowly over twenty years, and 11-110 of them wouldn't be a big issue on the time scales it took it to reach that level of concentration in the soil.
It does kill some animals fairly quickly, but it also feeds algae and other microorganisms as well as plant life on the shore. I expect that the "fallout" from this spill will hurt the fish and shrimp industries this year, but in the coming years, they will have bumper crops. I'm not saying this isn't an environmental incident, I just fail to see the doomsday scenarios that everyone is talking about.
Yeah, now who's making assumptions? Fail is the operative word here. Here's a couple links: http://www.answers.com/topic/exxon-valdez-oil-spill and http://www.eoearth.org/article/exxon_valdez_oil_spill showing how the environmental impact and disruption of ecosystems was ongoing ten and even twenty years later. There's plenty more on teh googles. Fishing was disrupted for multiple years, and catches have never recovered. Mortality remains high among contaminated fish and other animals.
It's not about doomsday from one spill, it's about damage to ecosystems that are already stressed. It's about idiots saying that it's not such a big deal so lets not stop doing it, ensuring that there will be subsequent stresses.